Urban Photography | Fotoeins Fotografie

Iris Andraschek in Vienna: telling the city who they are

For me, landmarks – a series of art works, for example – provide a network of “pins” for exploring and discovering parts of a city. That’s been my approach to Vienna’s 23 districts over the last 4 consecutive summers. Adding to the growing mind-map of memories, I’m restored by the excitement of the chase-and-find, among increasingly familiar surroundings and the frequency of new personal encounters.

Austrian artist Iris Andraschek works with photography, drawings. spatial installations, and video to explore and communicate ideas regarding cultural and societal relationships. Throughout Vienna, a number of Andraschek’s works are “visual interventions”, calling direct attention to the under-representation of women in the city’s public spaces.

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My Vienna: “Yellow Fog” by Olafur Eliasson

Above/featured: “Aus eigener Kraft”. Photo, 16 Jul 2025 (X70).

Is that red-hot steam?

It’s a warm and breezy summer evening, the colour of the light is illusory, and the blanket of mist is cool on contact.

At the southwest corner of the Am Hof square in central Vienna is the corporate headquarters of Verbund. Installed outside the building is Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s 2008 sculptural work “Yellow Fog“. The open public square becomes the arena to changing light, colour, and transparency; asking questions of perception and perspective. The display occurs every night for an hour after dusk, but not in winter.

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Vienna Grinzing Cemetery: Bernhard, Doderer, Ferstel, Mahler, Rosé

Above/featured: Grinzing cemetery, facing southeast. Photo, 26 May 2022.

Opening for its first burial in 1830, the Grinzing Cemetery in Vienna’s 19th district is modest in size, spread over an area of about 4.1 hectares (10 acres) and home to over 5000 graves. I highlight a number of notable people in arts and architecture, including connections with composer Gustav Mahler.

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My Berlin: The Parliament of Trees

Above: “Parlament der Bäume gegen Krieg und Gewalt.”

In Berlin’s government district is a patch of ground – a garden, really, with tall trees and a place that’s easy to overlook. The official name is “Parlament der Bäume gegen Krieg und Gewalt” (Parliament of Trees Against War and Violence), begun by artist Ben Wagin in 1990.

Wagin (1930–2021) began planting trees on land where the former Berlin Wall used to run near the historic Reichstag government building, as authorities began dismantling the physical wall. What remains of Wagin’s experiment is a piece of ground that acts as both memorial to what the Wall represented and fractured, and an aspiration for both modern Germany and Europe.

Of the many trees in this space, 16 of them represent the 16 modern federal states of Germany. There are also slabs of granite on which are engraved the names of the victims of the Wall. The “back” wall is painted with murals and messages, and in between are little paths and flower beds. I think Wagin also wants to remind us that in many parts in Berlin and throughout Germany, the former Wall dividing the city and the two former nations, respectively, have been reclaimed by nature.

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Vienna Steinhof Church: city- & Wagner-landmark

Above/featured: East side of the church, in afternoon light. Photo on 28 May 2023, X70 with wide-field WCL-X70 lens attachment, image corrected for geometric distortion.

Building: Steinhof church, also St. Leopold Church, 1907 // Kirche am Steinhof, Kirche zum heiligen Leopold.
Address: Baumgartner Höhe 1, in Penzing, the city’s 14th district.

Up on the city’s Baumgartner Heights is an example of Europe’s first modernist church at Steinhof. Dedicated to St. Leopold, the structure is one of the city’s finest examples of turn-of-the-century architecture, and one of the world’s most important churches in the Jugendstil or Art Nouveau architectural style. The church was designed and built by architect Otto Wagner, inaugurated in 1907 for patients and staff within the surrounding hospital complex the Lower Austria state, sanatorium, and nursing home for the mentally ill (Niederösterreichische Landes-, Heil-, und Pflegeanstalt für Geistes- und Nervenkranke) which included over 30 buildings and room for over 2000 beds. The bright, airy, and spacious modern design was met at that time with skepticism and criticism by local church officials. Of utmost importance on Wagner’s mind were the hospital patients: his church design was about gentle solitude, not fire and damnation.

The church was a collaborative effort with other Viennese artists, including mosaics and stained glass by Koloman Moser, angel sculptures by Othmar Schimkowitz, and exterior tower sculptures by Richard Luksch. The church roof is topped with a dome covered in gold-plated copper plates, whose bright yellow appearance in daylight merits the nickname “Limoniberg” (lemon hill) that’s visible in different parts of the city. The Steinhof church is an example of a “Gesamtkunstwerk“, where every detail and fixture contributed to a “total and functional work of art”; an architectural masterpiece of the period; and one of Otto Wagner’s most important creations.

I included this building as part of my description of Otto Wagner’s architectural legacy in Vienna and of the recent centenary celebration in Vienna of the city’s 19th- to 20th-century architectural transition from historicism to modernism.

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