Oliver Gerhartz is a German architect and artist
Episode 481: Oliver Gerhartz is a German architect and artist whose recent book, The Waning Season, I, in transparency, helped to edit, sequence, and publish through Nearest Truth Editions.
The Waning Season’s genesis began before the current Sudanese barbarity that we are presently witnessing. Oliver spent time in Khartoum as an architect designing the German embassy there before being recalled as the threat of political violence became increasingly likely. He and I had met in 2021 during a workshop, and by 2023, Sudan had begun its slow descent into bloodshed, a condition that sadly is not without previous example.
In this, between the two eras of political upheaval and while working on the embassy itself, Oliver met locals and built a body of work in Khartoum. He did not fly there for that specific purpose, but instead used the opportunity to meet locals and get a sense of what a post-war Sudan felt like, and you can see it in the photographs. At the same time, a sense of calm is instilled in the images, and what Oliver came back with is a beautiful, if sober, document of life in Khartoum between periods of upheaval, where apprehension hangs in the air like an anvil. As we witness the atrocities unfold in the Sudan, The Waning Season becomes an increasingly important document of time between the two eras of conflict.
The photographs present the anxious condition of the Sudanese people, and some carry a glint of hope in their eyes as Oliver catches them out and about in the capital. What is left is a vital record of unfulfilled hope in a period all too soon extinguished. Please listen to this episode if you can. It is close to my heart and relevant. The book is beautiful, and I am honored to have been involved with it.
