About The Book
In the wake of the Second World War, aiming to occupy the children rampaging streets and parks, the City of Amsterdam founded Jongensland, a space where boys (and the occasional, officially disallowed girl) could play, build, create, and destroy, largely without supervision.
In 1969, when the architectural photographer Ursula Schulz-Dornburg moved to Düsseldorf with her two young children, she discovered Jongensland the other side of the border from Germany’s strictly regulated playgrounds. Fascinated by the improvised buildings where her children would play, she made extensive photographs capturing them being constructed, used, demolished, and reshaped. Her images capture an intuitive architectural intelligence and capture a genre of vernacular construction with its own conventions and innovations, one which illuminates the role of imagination in defining a building’s identity and purpose.
This book presents Schulz-Dornburg’s largely unseen series alongside an extended essay by architectural historian Tom Wilkinson reflecting on the architectural themes and lessons Jongensland continues to offer. Publisher’s Info (Mack Books)
-> Further information: https://mackbooks.eu/collections/frontpage/products/huts-temples-castles-br-ursula-schulz-dornburg
About The Artist
Ursula Schulz-Dornburg (b.1938, Berlin) has lived and worked in Düsseldorf since 1969. Working primarily in black and white, her work since the late 1960s has been concerned with conceptual approaches to documenting the relationship between architecture, landscape, and cycles of human existence.
Her previous books with MACK include Bugis Houses, Celebes (2021), Yerevan 1996/1997 (2019), Zone Grise (co-published with MEP, Paris, 2019), and The Land in Between (2018), which was the winner of the 2018 Paris Photo / Aperture Foundation Awards.
Videos: (1) Ursula Schulz-Dornburg – ‘I Want to Archive These Places’ | TateShots (Youtube) (2) Kunst nach 1945: Ursula Schulz-Dornburg | Städel Museum (Youtube)