Anton Roland Laub: Mobile Churches. Photographs

About

Bucharest in the 1980s. Ceaușescu’s “systematisation” programme is in full swing in the Romanian capital: one-third of the historic centre has been wiped out to make way for imposing edifices and wide avenues intended to honour the regime. Despite Ceaușescu’s particularly dogged approach towards sacral buildings, seven churches are spared and undergo a process as incredible as it is absurd: they are lifted and placed on rails then moved and hidden behind housing blocks, while several other sacred places, such as the Polish Synagogue, were masked by socialist panel constructions. Withdrawn from the cityscape, interpolated in the disparate architecture that shapes Bucharest’s urban landscape today, they live secret lives holding unresolved remnants of the past. By combining recent photographs with archival material, "Mobile Churches" is a critical inventory aiming at revealing a lesser-known yet traumatic urban and political story.

In 2018, the photographic series “Mobile Churches” was nominated for the New Discovery Award at the International Photography Festival Les Rencontres d’Arles. 

The photo book "Mobile Churches" was published as a trilingual edition (De/Fr/En) by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, and will be available on the day of the opening.