A work in progress.

Die Vertikale Stadt.
Ein zukünftiger Film.

(Vertical City, A future film.)

»If you want to make a feature film, you need ideas for 70 scenes.« Following this advice by David Lynch Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber develop a new projects, shifting between photography and film. The screenplay of »Vertical City« takes you from Paris via Ruhr Area and Chongqing to Japan and back to Europe. The scripts originate from the metro line 14: from encounters in and around the stations. Each scene explores the topic of leaving and various urban, narrative and photographic layers.

»From the data from the outside, and from the material of memory, the brain makes up a story, and that story is what we think is reality« this quote by Vikram Chandra has accompanied our photographic work since the publication of Katja’s book ‚Könnte Sein’ by Kodoji Press, 2008.

The new chapter, Die Vertikale Stadt, builds on previous parts of Cartographie Dynamique. Expanding our approach into the direction of some “new new topographics” and documentary traditions—while allowing fictional elements to enter—we reflect on how photographic images change, how they are read, and how blurred the boundaries of the medium have become.

The ANT!FOTO manifesto from 2013 still guides us: A photo: is a photo, is black/white & colour, is an object, is a book; is a movie, is a story, is a statement; is an installation; is a copy, is an original, is always someone’s truth.

Urban Layers
We explored the historical development of planning and architecture within political, social, and cultural contexts, examining urban and peripheral landscapes. Each city has different levels: the tunnels of the metro and the supply-floors, the layers of garbage and sewers; different levels in stations, airports and shopping malls; the street level, highwalks, terasses; private and public places in smaller houses and high-rise buildings. Each of these urban layers also include historic layers of catacombes, old street-layouts, old walls and cemeteries.

Photographic Layers
We investigated how images are understood, and how meaning is built around photographs, highlighting the interaction between viewer and image. Also: since the invention of photography, the need to make the image move was immediately recognized, inspiring inventors to experiment with devices that could animate still pictures.

Narrative Layers
Die Vertikale Stadt includes multiple layers of narrative, drawing on music, literature, film, and personal memories to shape our photographic scenes.

The metro line as the spine of the story.

The storyline developed along Paris’s Métro ligne 14. Its final extension, linking Saint-Denis in the north to Orly Airport in the south, provided a vertical axis through the city, crossing contrasting social landscapes—from working-class suburbs to affluent central districts. The line also connects three major train stations and an airport, places intimately connected to leaving, arriving, and transition.

This line recently opened its last station and connects St Denis, a northern suburb with the Orly Airport in the south, drawing a vertical line through the city. Along this line you find not only different urban layers (political landscape) but you meet all kind of people, each with his/her own story, background, wishes, dramas, troubles.

Within each area you find various levels like: the tunnels of the metro and the supply-floors, the layers of garbage and sewers; different levels in stations, airports and shopping malls; the street level, highwalks, terasses; connections between different levels trough staircases, elevators, escalators or streets; private and public places in smaller houses and high-rise buildings. Each of these urban layers also include historic layers of catacombes, old street-layouts, old walls and cemeteries.

Leaving emerged as the central topic. We investigated the various reasons people leave: displacement, relocation, movement, avoidance, encounters, longing, loss, home, independence, escape, and arrival.
The metro line became the spine for these narratives. We gathered stories, observations, and dialogues in the trains, on the platforms, in stations, and in the streets around them. The diversity of neighbourhoods along the line provided a rich array of atmospheres and starting points for our scenes.

Various small fires: Each of the characters of each city in this film (Paris, Osaka, Chonging and the Ruhr Area) have to make the decision to leave the city or to stay due to various fires which have a deeply personal impact on the characters’ lives.

Inspired by David Lynch’s method of 70 scenes, we captured a large number of photographs and developed seventy scenes representing different characters and experiences.

Cast and portraits
Alongside landscape and cityscape photographs around the stations and snapshots inside trains and platforms, we assembled a cast for Die Vertikale Stadt: a variety of portraits and characters that inhabit this fictional world.

Photography and film
Our practice continues to explore questions about the photographic medium. Die Vertikale Stadt examined the relationship between photography and film, still and moving images, and the dialogue between what is seen and what viewers imagine. Each image invited the construction of individual stories, shaped by personal perspective and cultural context.

Katja Stuke, Oliver Sieber, Die Vertikale Stadt
one-channel-video, Full HD, 4:34 min

Die Vertikale Stadt includes:
Main photographs (landscape, cityscape, portrait)
location and scenic photographs
storyboards/zines
trailer
posters
the script
mood boards
behind-the-scenes snapshots
comp cards
scrapbooks
ephemera
video sequences and sound files

(Room Service, PhotoSaint Germain 2025, Hotel La Louisiane)

The Special Edition (Ed #5) includes:
35 szenes
10 cast-portraits
5 posters

(Room Service, PhotoSaint Germain 2025, Hotel La Louisiane)