The landscape format images show scenic depictions of people moving around in an urban setting. Eisenhardt characterizes his panoramas as a "visual unity" of a random human-space constellation. This visual unity arises because the camera "sees" more than the human eye can perceive at the same time, and thereby brings different realities together. "The recording technique used, which does not completely dissolve the spherical field of view of the eye into a plan-perspective image, keeps the memory of the non-technical side of our vision alive, such as the wandering gaze of an interested, i.e. experiencing, viewer accompanied by a movement of the head," says the photographer himself.

His photographs are neither planned in advance nor composed, although it always seems as if the "fertile" moment has been hit each time. This does not mean that the photographs capture iconic states. We do not freeze in awe before them. There is too much humorous distance in them for that, which obviously guided the photographer's - albeit unconscious - creative curiosity and interest and which makes looking at these pictures so appealing and exciting. Eisenhardt himself does not want his panoramas to "tell a story or provide visual evidence for certain facts, neither to argue nor to document." The truth lies in the pictures themselves. Even if the results of the camera are the focus of interest, the viewing subject does not stop reading the media results according to their own patterns of perception. And this can very well result in fantastic narrative sequences. However, the viewing of images is not limited to narrative; it is predominantly aesthetic structures that leave the defining impression. The choice of black and white photography leads to a language of its own, which often places the individual subjects in a tense relationship: lines and surfaces create an image pattern detached from the object. What remains crucial, however, is the dynamism of the image capture through the movement of the people and the capture of the "decisive moment." Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographic credo is valid for Hanns-Christoph Eisenhardt. He rightly sees himself in this tradition of momentary photography. "Photography derives its own imagery from the fleeting lines that arise from the movement of the subject. We work in harmony with the movement, as if it were revealing the law of life to us. But within the movement there is a moment in which all moments are in harmony. Photography must capture this moment and hold its balance forever." (Henri Cartier-Bresson)

Gisela Kraut, Fünf x Fotografie aus Frankfurt, in: Rolf Lauter (ed.), Kunst in Frankfurt. Positionen aktueller Kunst der 80er und 90er Jahre, Frankfurt am Main 1995

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Our eyes see only what's inside the angle of their face. Ourselves and the field in our back we can't see. But we can bring out what's outside the angle of the face if we put up a mirror. The mirror then shows us "that" which lies beyond the angle of our face, as if it were in front of our eyes; and even shows the eyes themselves. The same applies to consciousness. Also consciousness Is always bound to the perspective of a certain angle of face. It only gets to see what it can put in front of itself as an object within that angle of view. In this way, the objects are not transformed into mere “ideas”, that means into contents of consciousness. Rather, the word "idea" denotes an act of thought by which we visualize what is real in such a way that it can be recognized as a real object. Not everything that is real can be put in front of our eyes in this form. Not everything can be brought into the angle of face of our objectifying consciousness. All the more, however, the all of the real, within which we find ourselves, cannot be built up in front of us as an object. But the human mind has the opportunity to bring to light what lies in the back of consciousness and therefore can never be objectified. It builds mirrors on whose surfaces it catches reflexes of what is hidden to consciousness.  Such mirrors are the artworks; "The beautiful has its life in the appearance" (Hegel, Aesthetics). Our understanding of the artwork depends on not confusing the appearance of the reflected image with the real objects that lie within the angle of our face. The artwork therefore has its essence in appearance.

Georg Picht, Kunst und Mythos, Stuttgart 1990
 
 
The Siege of Mainz (1979/80)

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If we could look at laughter under a microscope, we might recognize in its most general particles an element of the Mainz carnival. This basic material of organized cheerfulness appears to us in many different forms: as an overshooting spark that signals consent, as a contagious bacillus that forces us to laugh in defiance of all defenses, as a reaction to the punchline of a joke whose absurdity would make a mockery of all reason, as an escape from the narrowness of fear and depression in hysterical laughter, as a liberating laughter that cast aside the pressure of overwhelming facts. and finally as the seemingly unmotivated smile of the just insecure. What all seem to have in common is the sudden escape from a state of overpowering order and limited scope for action, largely independent of free will and reason.

Looking at the history of Mainz through a telescope, comparable motifs can be identified. You can imagine it like this: Celtic foundation and Roman influence, failed attempts to gain imperial immediacy in the Middle Ages, competing spheres of power of court, church and university. Then the border location with France, the influence of the French Revolution, conquest and reconquest, in between Mainz as the first republic on German soil. Finally, Hessian government, alternating Prussian and Austrian military rule, March Revolution and National Assembly in Frankfurt. What should be their guide?

The people of Mainz, in the age of democratic ideas as a minor part of history, have created their own institutions: the Rosenmontag procession as a revolutionary demonstration, the carnival session as a general parliament, the Council of Eleven as the executive, the question "want  we let him in?" as a democratic vote. The magic number "eleven" carried forward, they always move (with their heads bowed?) a little under the cover of fixed orders: the twelve months, the twelve tribes of Jacob, the twelve apostles (there is always a traitor among twelve!).

Or as Leszek Kolakowski writes in Der Mensch ohne Alternative: "The attitude of the fool consists in the constant effort of thinking about the possible reasons for opposing ideas. It is thus inherently dialectical. But it is not caused by the desire for contradiction, but by distrust of any stabilized world."

 
Glasgow 1980

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In 1886, Glasgow photographer Thomas Annan (1829-1877) began a commissioned work to document the streets, buildings and narrow streets of Glasgow that were destined for demolition under the Glasgow City Improvement Act of 1866. Overpopulated and plague-ridden downtown neighborhoods following industrialization were to give way to more generous development and to improve the housing conditions of the city’s population multiplied by immigrants in a few decades. The locations where he photographed include about Bridgegate, Gallowgate, Gorbals, High Street, Saltmarket and Trongate.

After my first encounter with Thomas Annan's photographs in 1978, I made a series of thirty photographs in 1980 at the locations indicated by Annan. Visiting Annan's recording sites was beyond question, not only because they would have been hard to find, but above all because my intention were about to recreate Annan's work at a distance of more than 100 years in a contemporary form: instead of inserted clouds and brightened-up pieces of laundry, the style of a "straight" documentation is replaced by a more distant and non-commissioned view of architectural ensembles, albumen and carbon prints as well as photogravures are replaced by silver gelatin prints. What the works of Thomas Annan and my documentation Glasgow 1980 have in common is that they were each created in a period of great economic and urban change.​