The scars of industry in Lausitz, Brandenburg: Maximilian Semlinger
Lampoon SOAP: photographer Maximilian Semlinger documenting a post-industrial landscape marked by coal mining
Stains in the Landscape — Maximilian Semlinger and Alessia Ansalone explore the scars of industry in Lausitz, Brandenburg
In Lausitz, Brandenburg, the landscape bears the weight of transformation. Once one of Germany’s major coal-mining regions, it now stands as a site of both extraction and restoration — a terrain where nature and industry coexist uneasily. Cooling towers rise from the flat horizon, while new lakes fill the cavities left by decades of open-pit mining. The air still carries the memory of energy production, even as the region begins to imagine a different future.
This shifting ground is the setting for Stains in the Landscape, a photographic series by Maximilian Semlinger, styled by Alessia Ansalone, for Lampoon Magazine. The project confronts the visible and invisible traces of industrialization, questioning what remains when progress fades and how the next generation will inhabit these altered environments.
The series positions young models and activists before power plants and lakes — figures of a generation growing up under the shadow of ecological crisis. Their presence against the monumental geometry of smokestacks and machinery stages a quiet confrontation: fragility meeting force, human scale confronting the vastness of industry.
Lausitz, Brandenburg: a landscape defined by coal, transformation, and renewal
Lausitz — or Lusatia, as it is also known — extends between Germany and Poland, a region shaped by a century of lignite mining that once powered much of East Germany. Villages were relocated, forests cleared, and rivers diverted to feed the demands of extraction. Today, the same pits have been flooded to create vast artificial lakes, transforming zones of exploitation into ambiguous spaces of leisure and reclamation.
But regeneration here is complex. The scars of mining remain visible in the soil and air, in the geometry of reshaped land. Wind turbines and solar fields now stand beside coal plants still in operation, forming a layered testimony to transition — not from one era to another, but from one compromise to the next. Stains in the Landscape situates itself precisely within this in-between moment: neither nostalgia nor prophecy, but observation of a landscape that refuses resolution.
From gas stations to protest: fragments of a journey through industrial Germany
The one-hour drive from Berlin to Lausitz becomes part of the project’s narrative. Along the road, bus stops, gas stations, and roadside stretches appear as transitional scenes — places where movement pauses and perception sharpens. These stops embody the everyday proximity of the industrial world, its quiet integration into routine life.
In some images, the models cover parts of their faces or bodies with scarves, T-shirts, or emergency blankets — an aesthetic drawn from the anonymity of climate activism. The gesture recalls the defenders of forests and territories across Europe, who protect their identities as they protect the land. Here, it becomes both a poetic symbol and a reminder: the act of resistance is also an act of visibility.
TEAM
Photography, Maximilian Semlinger, styling Alessia Ansalone, talent Madelief Bouter @ikonmodelmgmt, casting Maria Defant @juliesinioscasting, grooming Anna Sophey, photo assistant Leopold Stöckert, styling Assistant Youjung Kim, retouch Studio Gessner
