Stefan Canham – Bauwagen | Mobile Squatters

Peperoni 2006

First edition

He embodies the dream of an unconventional, free life
and is a stumbling block for politics and urban planning: the inhabited trailer. There are currently 100 trailer sites in Germany alone, from Flensburg down to Tübingen, around ten thousand people live in trailers.
With his photographs, Stefan Canham presents the first comprehensive documentation of this urban phenomenon that can no longer be overlooked.

In strictly composed, central perspective color photos, a look inside the trailer shows the inventiveness of an alternative scene, the composition of which is extremely diverse: academics live here next to craftsmen, students next to Tai Chi teachers, gardeners next to musicians. Furnishings range from punk caves to rustic villas on wheels, comfort from candlelight to DSL connection.

The residents occupy urban wasteland with their wagons and settle them before they become objects of speculation. Alternating from the colored interior to the graphic black and white of the exterior shots, the trailer appears as a wedge in the regulated structure of the city: a spontaneous architecture of discarded trailers, made of wooden slats and corrugated iron, raised by a second floor and decorated with old building windows.

Stitch bound HC with dust jacket, 30 x 23 x 2 cm., 144 pp., more than 120 color & b/w ills., bilingual text: German / English