Regarding Max Weber (2010-2011)

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The creation of 250 watercolours of Protestant churches in the format of tourist postcards offers an ironic reassessment of what churches—specifically Protestant churches—represent. Originally built as places of worship, today most of them have become little more than tourist attractions.

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At the same time, Max Weber’s theory, according to which the Protestant ethic was one of the catalysts of modern capitalism, provides a link between the premodern era of religious worship and our own time, in which churches have been desacralised by the tourist gaze and by the very capitalism they helped to bring into being.

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Each of the images belongs to someone performing the role of tourist: first photographing the church and then uploading the image to a profile on websites such as Flickr.

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The grid arrangement reflects an intention to reveal that all the images conform to an aesthetic of the picturesque—an aesthetic which, when applied by the tourist, connects directly with a form of time governed by the logic of nihilism.