Cologne salvation
Das Kölner Heil
Power and Rituals in the Roman Catholic Church of Cologne - Photographs 1986-1996
The photography of Bernd Arnold in the monograph DAS KÖLNER HEIL show the hermetic and hierarchic world of the clergy of the Cologne Catherdral. It is marked by merit and mercy, by sorrow and hope, by sin and salvation. The pictures analyse the power structures of an autonomic system of salvation, surviving seemingly untouched by all developments of our century.
Hardcover 32x24cm, 38 plates, 56 pages. English/German. Design by Winfried Heininger. Publisher Christoph and Markus Schaden. Published by Schaden Verlag, Cologne 1997. ISBN 3-932187-01-6.
"Seen from its theological meaning, the term „Heil“ defines the essence of all religion, in that it pinpoints one of man’s most existential experiences: that of „Unheil“ or evil. Out of this experience grows man’s subsequent longing for „Heil“, or salvation, in the sense of redemption. Mankind and the saviour, salvation and harm, sin and deliverance. Around this very basic underlying structure of opposites, there is grouped, in every religion, a very fine-woven network of different factors, necessary in order to attain redemption..."