END OF THE JOURNEY

They were built to be on the move. Trains, aircraft, ships and cars that carried people to distant places, that crossed whole countries, got the better of oceans and lifted themselves into the sky. Now they stand still. END OF THE JOURNEY is a tribute to machines whose last journey is behind them.

A vehicle that no longer moves is a contradiction in itself. Everything about it is laid out for motion, the shape, the wheels, the wings, the hulls, and that is exactly why its stillness touches us. Alone in the middle of nowhere or gathered in silent graveyards they stand where their engines fell quiet for the last time. Rust draws its patterns across the paintwork, moss settles on the bodywork, nature slowly closes around them, as it closes around everything left to it.

Every one of these vehicles holds a promise of distance. Someone sat in it and looked out of the window, set off or came home, waited, slept, hoped. The seats are empty, but the direction is still there. You can see in them where they meant to go.

This is a series about departure and arrival, about speed, and about the fact that every journey ends at some point, including the journey of the things that carried us. Transience does not only catch up with houses. It also catches what was built to outrun it.

END OF THE JOURNEY shows the dignity in that rest. Melancholy, because the motion is missing, and reconciled at the same time, because in their final place the machines have become something they could never be while moving: part of the landscape.