ARCHIVE // Gregor Matthias Zielke Photography

I’m a Goy, a non-Jewish person, and I always will be. Over the past 12 years I have been eagerly documenting the Jewish community in Germany, mostly in Berlin, because that’s where I’m based. And over time I just fell madly in love with it. Growing up in Germany, Judaism has always been a very sensitive topic. Most people perceive Jewish life only thorugh holocaust memorial or repeated news of antisemitism. Depiction of Jews in the media is usually reduced to men with long beards and dressed in black or anonymous people wearing a kippa. Ever so often very exotic. But what is beyond that? What does real life Judaism actually mean? Jewish life occurs in a myriad of ways, being Jewish is just as much a question of identity as it is one of religion. This series is an ongoing exploration of my own questions and wonderings, challenging my own stereotypes and preconceptions.

North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, situated in the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe, has always been a region torn by various neighbouring countries. It is one of the successor states of Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in September 1991 under the name Republic of Macedonia. North Macedonia remained at peace through the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s. A few very minor changes to its border with Yugoslavia were agreed upon to resolve problems with the demarcation line between the two countries. It was seriously destabilised by the Kosovo War in 1999, when an estimated 360,000 ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo took refuge in the country.They departed shortly after the war, and Albanian nationalists on both sides of the border took up arms soon after in pursuit of autonomy or independence for the Albanian-populated areas of North Macedonia. Since the coming to power of the ruling VMRO-DPMNE government in 2006, they pursued a policy of "Antiquisation" as a way of putting pressure on Greece as well as for the purposes of domestic identity-building. Statues of Alexander the Great and Philip of Macedon have been built in several cities across the country. Additionally, many pieces of public infrastructure, such as airports, highways, and stadiums were renamed after Alexander and Philip. These actions were seen as deliberate provocations in neighbouring Greece, exacerbating the dispute and further stalling the country's EU and NATO applications.

PROMISED LAND Mozambique has attracted two of the world’s largest mining companies – Brazil’s Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (Vale) and the Anglo-Australian multinational Rio Tinto – to extract coal from the huge fields in Tete province. In 2010, Vale and Rio Tinto were the second and third most valuable mining companies on earth, worth $ 169 and $ 83 billion respectively. Vale has already developed a $ 1.3 billion Moatize coal mine in Mozambique and made its first shipment of 2,200 tons of coal in August 2011 through the port of Beira. Rio Tinto started exporting coal in 2012 from its Benga project, which has an annual capacity of 2.4 million tons. Rio Tinto PLC (RIO) has also recently completed a $4 billion acquisition of the Mozambique-focused mining company, Riversdale Mining Ltd. In an effort of exploitation over 700 families from the villages of Chipanga, Mitete, Malabue-Gombe and Bagamoyo near Moatize were resettled to Cateme village, a Vale resettlement compound in 2010. Vale deliberately divided the communities in two with employed villagers moving to 25 de Setembro since it is closer to Moatize and the coal mine, the unemployed were resettled to Cateme, 40 km from the original town. While the most immediate problem of the community is the enormous distance to Moatize, their old habitat, they also suffer from unproductive farmland which can only be reached via a two hour walk, no access to markets and infrastructure and poorly constructed houses not fitted to the peoples’ needs with temperatures inside reaching as high as 65° C due to the construction with tin clad roofs and missing isolation. © Gregor Zielke

In 1898, Germany coerced China into leasing them 553 square kilometers of land in Northeast China for 99 years. The most important city in this lease, at least for the Germans was the city of Qingdao. The colony was to become the first European colony on mainland China, as Taiwan (Japan), Hong Kong (Britain) and Macau (Portugal) were all islands. Qingdao thus has a historic significance, as in the next two years a number of European powers made similar moves on other parts of China. These were not colonies for settlement like the Americas or Australia, but were set up to try and exploit China economically. Although it was to be a rather short stay for the German occupiers as they would be defeated by Japanese forces after only fifteen years, they would within this short period of time leave a sizeable footprint. They built a railroad, made improvements to the harbour and even opened a shipyard. They also continued to establish their Christian presence through the construction of churches, and were able to establish a brewery, whose first batch of beer was finished in 1904. The brewery has continued to produce beer ever since, and has brought the city national and international recognition. Now the city has grown to a population of over 8 million but remains of former German governance are still visible in the old town and are recently even being preserved and restored.

© Gregor Zielke / PANPHOTOS . COOPERATIVE CHINA URBANIZATION - rapid transition from villages to cities in Eastern China. 20 years may not seem a long time in the development of a country but in Dong Ying, Shandong Province of China, the clocks tick differently. Only 20 years ago the city of Dong Ying was built from scratch due to the exploration of Sheng Li Oil Field, one of only two major oil exploration sites in China. Since then the city has grown rapidly to a population of over 3,000,000 people. For the older, old habits are hard to come by so fishing and other ways of self sustainment are still practised widely around town while the younger generation quickly adapts. Still many housing projects are in development attracting more people from the surrounding villages by highly subsidized apartments keeping village communities located together in the city, often on their former land as the city expands in size.

Orthodox Christians in North Macedonia celebrate Epiphany Day by diving into freezing water to retrieve a wooden crucifix, in a tradition dating back to Byzantine times. In Ohrid, said to be the birthplace of (North) Macedonian orthodoxy, more than 500 orthodox christians gather every year early in the morning to dive into the icy waters of Lake Ohrid to retrieve a crucifix and receive blessings.

Travels through Israel, 2013

Famous for its eruption in AD 79, Mount Vesuvius is located in the city of Naples in southern Italy and has erupted many times since. Today it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world due to a population of 3,000,000 people living close to it. It is therefore the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.

Travels through Iceland, 2007

Travels along the coast of Andalucía in southern Spain. 2006