On a photo safari in the Ruhr area

The Ruhr region

Although around five million people live in the Ruhr area, the former region of coal, coke and steel has been transformed into a fascinating green area over the past two decades. Since the decommissioning of numerous industrial plants, animals and plants have either completely redeveloped their habitat or reclaimed it. The biodiversity is now even greater than on the intensively farmed agricultural land in the neighboring rural areas. One example: the population of lapwings is currently declining significantly in the wet meadows and pastures of North Rhine-Westphalia. In the Ruhr region, on the other hand, the bird continues to breed on industrial and commercial wasteland.

The wild Ruhr region

The "Wild Ruhr" project creates a platform for this change in the region. in 2014, nature photographer Peter Sch?tz wrote the article "Wild Ruhr" in a photo magazine. As a result
the Essen-based wildlife and nature photographer Alexander Krebs, together with Sch?tz and his photographer friend Markus Botzek, founded the eponymous photo project "Wild Ruhr". It is a long-term project that aims to bring the region's urban wilderness into the public eye. For several years now, the couple Stefan and Sabine Fabritz and the copywriter Volker Kienast have also been part of the core team. And these photographers know what they are doing, as they are trained biologists, environmental scientists or have been intensively involved in ornithology for years. With numerous exhibitions, trade fairs, the website www.wildes-ruhrgebiet.de, via social media such as Facebook and Twitter, at lectures and photography courses, they succeed in drawing attention to the special situation of flora and fauna in the Ruhr region.

The visual language: The Ruhr is in the picture

With their impressive photographs and texts, the "Wild Ruhr" photographers focus on the often specialized plants and animals that live here. The photographs published on www.wildes-ruhrgebiet.de follow their own urban visual language: the plants, animals and landscapes depicted are set in an industrial-urban context. There are many outstanding photographs of a kingfisher, but a good kingfisher picture with a recognizable reference to the old industrial and urban landscape of the Ruhr area is a rarity. And photographing a natterjack toad may be easy at first, but a natterjack toad in the Landschaftspark Nord in Duisburg Meiderich? Conventional animal and nature photography produces images that do not express what nature in urban areas is all about.
Photographing in such a way that the images also express urbanity means rethinking: power lines, buildings or streets are placed in relation to the main motif through cleverly chosen image details in order to emphasize what is special about the region: the coexistence of people, animals and plants.

Because these highly adaptable species come very close to humans in urban areas and benefit from them. Therefore, the aim of urban imagery is, for example, to stage a red fox in such a way that a stream that has been concreted into a canal can be easily recognized. In order to achieve such an urban imagery, a picture must be well planned, random products rarely succeed. Photographers achieve the best images when they develop entire series of pictures of an animal or plant species over a longer period of time. One example is the story about honeybees in the Ruhr region, which was published on the homepage. And in addition to the photographs, there are many interesting facts: Who knows that a beekeeper with 120 hives has more honey bees working for him (namely around seven million) than the population of the densely populated Ruhr region, which has five million inhabitants.