THE WEAR AND TEAR by Ulf Miers
The street doesn't lie. And Ulf Miers pays close attention.
The Hamburg-based cameraman, visual director and photographer dedicates this project to road markings - the lines, arrows and cracks that guide us every day, yet often go unnoticed.
What most overlook becomes, in Miers’ work, a stage for abstraction - for form and color, for what remains when everything else has long moved on.
The street doesn't lie. And Ulf Miers pays close attention.
The Hamburg-based cameraman, visual director and photographer dedicates this project to road markings - the lines, arrows and cracks that guide us every day, yet often go unnoticed.
What most overlook becomes, in Miers’ work, a stage for abstraction - for form and color, for what remains when everything else has long moved on.
These are images without spectacle - but with impact. His square-format macro shots reveal urban life at its rawest and most honest: weathered, worn, beautiful. No staging. Just light, surface, texture.
Shot during travels across the globe - Miers is a visual director and often on the road - the works capture a visual language that transcends geography. Whether São Paulo, Stockholm or Manila: the asphalt tells the same stories. Of motion. Of control. Of decay. And of the fact that order never lasts.
The style is clear, almost austere. At times it echoes the cinematic sensibility of Rut Blees Luxemburg or the sober seriality of Ed Ruscha’s Gasoline Stations - yet Miers needs no references. His work stands on its own.
Drawing on decades of experience in framing, lighting and color dramaturgy from film production, he brings technical precision and artistic sensitivity into each piece.
His photographs don’t demand attention - they command it.
For those who look closely, there’s more to see: erosion and time.
For those who look closely, there’s more to see: erosion and time.