Winfried Bullinger

More generally, vernacular architecture refers to tradition in its basic definition, i.e. a know-how transmitted from generation to generation in a region with specific natural and cultural conditions.
This perspective allows vernacular architecture to be conceived in the multidimensional reality of a historical micro-nation and opens the possibility of understanding periodised and correlated patterns of distinctive ecology and social practice.
Every African from a sedentary community has, so to speak, his or her own village, a territory of anchorage, where individual ontological and collective identity and social life are fulfilled. For nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples, it is the virtual perception of space that the ecosystem, without being exclusive, delimits and makes operative. This universe can be thought of as the place of production and exercise of vernacular architecture in Africa.

Germain Loumpet, Meaning and Renewal of Vernacular Architecture in Africa, in Winfried Bullinger, Pastoralist Homes, Steidl 2025

Even the traces of the residents’ everyday life, such as plastic bottles lying around, remain visible in the pictures; nothing is cleared away before the picture is taken. The found condition of the buildings with supposedly disturbing elements is preserved. Winfried Bullinger also rejects retouching of the pictures. There is no idealisation of the buildings as supposed monoliths. Winfried Bullinger repeatedly shows the buildings in the context of other buildings and as part of their natural surroundings, which they are virtually inscribed in. In contrast to the “Becher ideal” of diffuse light with the sky covered, Winfried Bullinger depicts the buildings in different light situations. For his pictures, he also uses the sun’s highest point with its harsh contrasts and deep shadows. In this way, he shows the buildings in the light that changes during the day and the light that different weather brings with it. He shows them as their inhabitants see them.

Thomas Schirmböck, Nomadic peoples leave no ruins, in Winfried Bullinger, Pastoralist Homes, Steidl 2025