ELUSIVE fleeting worlds

Photographer, architect, and artist Michael Haus explored the poetry of urban moments for his book project Elusive while traveling through various countries such as India, Colombia, Morocco, France, Greece, Germany, etc., in his often picturesque, multi-layered photographs. Everyday life in different realities becomes the main character in the dialogue of moments.

Everywhere he finds such fleeting moments, which paradoxically often only reveal themselves after close observation. The images in this photo book, taken between 2004 and 2024, are condensed through a sequence of image pairings, beyond chronology and geography, into a mysterious, elusive visual world of their own.

With subtle humor and a sure sense of colors, shapes, and the spaces they create, Michael Haus finds his ever-unusual perspectives on the magic of our world. As different as the images are, they are united by a very unique visual language.

The book was edited as part of the DFA’s Editing Challenge with Wolfgang Zurborn, by and with photobook designer Nicole Keller, resulting in a narrative flow that is full of surprises.

This photobook invites us to see our man-made, globalized world in a new light, to question it, and ultimately to find our own, perhaps poetic and optimistic interpretations of it.