Christian Werner From L.A. to Garbsen Nord

Photographer Christian Werner loves the motorway. He has put together a “best of” compilation of his photos for our Autobahn Special, featuring a range of impressions from Los Angeles to Garbsen Northbound Services.

Throughout his life, Christian Werner has had three favourite activities: driving cars, listening to music, and taking photos. As a photographer, he has been a permanent feature on the Berlin culture scene since the late 1990s. He works for magazines in Germany and internationally, but the main focus of his work is on long-term projects, which have already resulted in several books. The motorway is one of Christian Werner’s favourite themes. He grew up in a car family, always within sight of his grandmother’s workshop and scrapyard, and learned to drive aged just ten. So the typically German concept of Fahrvergnügen (driving for pleasure) describes him to a tee, and he takes photographs when he’s out and about. He has put together a “best of” compilation of his photos for our Autobahn Special, featuring a range of impressions from Los Angeles to Garbsen North.

Los Angeles, the City of Angels

Los Angeles is Christian’s favourite city (apart from Berlin). He loves how the city inscribes itself on nature, the ocean on one side, the desert on the other, the hills in the middle and this unique light over it all. Christian’s book “Los Angeles”, with words by Tom Kummer, is published by Korbinian-Verlag. To ensure that he didn’t fall into the trap of churning out over-used clichés in possibly the most-photographed city in the world, Christian followed strict rules: no writing to be shown in the image, and no people.

Garbsen and beyond

For the photos in the book “Die Raststätte. Eine Liebeserklärung” (The Service Station: A Declaration of Love) by Florian Werner (no relation), Christian spent a whole day at the Garbsen Northbound motorway services. Where is Garbsen North? It’s exactly in the middle of Germany on the A2. The book is about Marc Augé’s definition of the motorway service station as a non-place: as a place without history and without a connection to people. What happens when you hang out for a whole day at a place where people never spend more than 15 minutes?