From July 19, 3PM to August 24, Winfried Bullinger’s exhibition “Structures for living. Vernacular architecture in Africa” (curator – Gintaras Cesonis) is open at Kaunas Photography Gallery.
This solo exhibition by German photographer Winfried Bullinger, offers an alternative view of the architectural heritage of the African continent – one that has long been overlooked or marginalized within Western visual culture.
Bullinger’s black-and-white photographs depict buildings across Eastern and Central Africa – structures made without architects, but not without architecture. Built by hand from local materials, they emerge from generational knowledge and lived experience. Constructed by nomadic and semi-nomadic communities, these forms embody resilience, adaptability, and continuity in harsh environmental conditions – without excess, without ruins, but with wisdom, authenticity, and a profound relationship to place.
This is an architecture often disregarded by colonial imagination and sidelined by contemporary models of modernization. The pressures of globalization, standardized urbanism, and imported design norms threaten these landscapes – landscapes seldom deemed “significant” by architects or policymakers. Bullinger’s photographs serve not only as quiet documentation but also as a critical statement: they speak to memory, autonomy, and the diversity of cultural systems.
Working with a large-format analog camera, Bullinger slows down the act of seeing. His is a form of visual attention grounded in respect, collaboration, and trust – a visual archive of disappearing forms that silently poses the question: What do we consider architecture, and how is it connected to life and human nature?
Exhibition is supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture and Kaunas City Municipality. The patron of Kaunas Photography Gallery is AON, main sponsor – letsinvest.eu.