Peter Piller, Von Erde schöner, 2017

In 2002, Peter Piller came into possession of an archive of 20,000 aerial photographs of German detached houses, produced as part of a commercial venture. The company’s aim was to sell the photographs to homeowners, who were fascinated by the idea of seeing their own homes from above; the advent of Google Maps was still a long way off. Looking at them today, in Piller’s splendid compilation which mixes and matches the categories under which the images were originally archived, one is captivated by a journey into the past that nevertheless also reveals much about the present: our way of life, our understanding of the home, and our reaction to photography.