{"id":422,"date":"2026-09-04T08:22:50","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T08:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zeitspiel.net\/folgelandschaften-afterscapes\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T14:43:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T14:43:31","slug":"afterscapes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/zeitspiel.net\/en\/afterscapes\/","title":{"rendered":"Folgelandschaften \/ Afterscapes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Folgelandschaften \/ Afterscapes<\/h1>\n

Disused open-cast mines, former national borders and fields left to grow wild: where human use ends or changes, new landscapes emerge \u2013 through natural processes, deliberate reshaping, or a combination of both.<\/p>\n

Folgelandschaften \u2013 or afterscapes \u2013 is an ongoing long-term photographic documentation of such places. It focuses on landscapes whose present form tells of past uses, interventions and transformations. Rather than attempting a comprehensive survey, the work explores photographically what happens to a landscape after a particular use has ended. <\/p>\n

Places and Periods<\/h2>\n

From a fractured mountain peak in the Alps to a fortified island in the North Sea, few landscapes have remained untouched by human activity. The stories behind the landscapes documented here belong to very different periods, reaching back to antiquity and beyond. <\/p>\n

Some transformations are immediately visible; others can only be understood through the history of a place. It is this relationship between landscape and the past that lies at the heart of the documentation.
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What Is an Afterscape?<\/h2>\n

The German word Folgelandschaft is most commonly associated with lignite mining, particularly in the term Bergbaufolgelandschaft: literally, a landscape that follows mining. <\/p>\n

The idea can also be applied more broadly to landscapes that continue to evolve under new conditions once their former use has ended \u2013 for example, agricultural land that is given over to nature conservation.<\/p>\n

For this documentation, Folgelandschaft \u2013 afterscape in English \u2013 is deliberately used in this wider sense: a landscape whose present character has been substantially shaped by a former use, its abandonment, or the transformation that followed.<\/p>\n

Rewilding vs. Reclamation<\/h2>\n

What follows the end of a particular use can take many forms. Rewiling or renaturation focuses on restoring habitats and natural processes to a state that is as close to nature as possible. Reclamation, by contrast, involves the deliberate restoration or reshaping of previously used land \u2013 for example for agriculture, forestry or recreation. <\/p>\n

There are also places where human intervention largely ceases, intentionally or otherwise, allowing new forms of landscape to develop over years or decades.
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Energy Afterscapes<\/h2>\n

One focus of the documentation to date has been landscapes created or transformed through the extraction and use of energy resources. Over time, it became increasingly apparent how closely energy is connected to very different types of landscape \u2013 from resource extraction and power generation to infrastructure, industry and subsequent reuse. <\/p>\n

This work gave rise to Hausbrand<\/a>. What began as a photographic documentation of energy landscapes and afterscapes developed over the years into an independent project, bringing contemporary photography together with historical imagery and the recorded experiences of people who lived and worked in these places. <\/p>\n

Get in Touch<\/h2>\n

Do you know an afterscape, work with the history of such a place, or have a question about the documentation? We welcome information, suggestions and exchange. <\/p>\n

Please feel free to contact us at post@folgelandschaften.de<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can also subscribe to our German newsletter<\/a> for updates on new photography, research and publications.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-422","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeitspiel.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeitspiel.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeitspiel.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeitspiel.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeitspiel.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/zeitspiel.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":443,"href":"https:\/\/zeitspiel.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/422\/revisions\/443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeitspiel.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}