Megacities: Living in the World’s Largest Cities

- Cross-media project, including additional digital content that is exclusively available with the app and the book

- Hot topic: constantly growing cities and the associated challenges

- Insights into 10 megacities around the world: Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, New York City, London, Istanbul, Cairo, Seoul, Shanghai, Mumbai, Bangkok

Megacities is a visually stunning tribute to the largest cities of our civilization. In this high-quality coffee table book, the three authors Christoph Mohr, Oliver Fülling and Bastian Barenbock show everyday life in ten megacities in Asia, Africa, America, and Europe. They photographed city life in Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, New York City, London, Istanbul, Cairo, Seoul, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Bangkok. More than 280 photos and numerous interviews not only show a deep insight into daily life there, they also deal with the central questions of urban planning. How does one live and reside in such an environment, how do residents organize their leisure time. Why do informal settlements emerge and where are the public places that people go to. How does each individual city deal with the issues of overpopulation, sustainability, environmental protection, and globalization. What is special about this impressive coffee-table book is the contrast in presentation. The photographers manage to depict wealth and poverty, culture and crime, tradition, festivals, customs, religion, and innovation in one go. Text in English and German.

Christoph Mohr has lived and worked in Cologne since 1999. As a camera assistant, he worked on cinema films as well as documentaries. After filming in Manila, Christoph was so enthusiastic about the photos he brought back that he decided to become a photographer. Through his artistic use of light and color, he succeeds in taking impressive snapshots of the regions he travels to. He is particularly interested in the developing countries of the southern hemisphere. In addition to rural and urban life, he is interested in the local social, cultural and political conditions. People are at the center of his work. This results in a balanced mixture of portrait, landscape, urban, documentary and reportage photography, with which he provides interesting and comprehensive impressions. But crisis areas are also part of his portfolio. In 2016, for example, he took part in a film project in which the refugee routes through the Sahara were photographed. And twice he was in Ukraine in early 2022. His main clients include major publishers and NGOs. After the volume Sacred Cities of Buddhism, his path went more in the social documentary direction again and he launched the cross-media project Megacities. www.christophmohr-fotografie.de Bastian Barenbrock is a freelance documentary and landscape photographer, as well as a cameraman and drone photography specialist based in Cologne. Driven by his passion for travel and curiosity for different cultures and landscapes, the focus of his work is on high-quality documentaries for renowned, international production companies and TV stations for which he works worldwide. Years of experience in documentary filmmaking have enabled him to develop a cinematic visual language that uses aerial shots and unusual perspectives to create new perspectives and tell multi-faceted stories. www.instagram.com/bastian_barenbrock Oliver Fülling is a freelance author, editor and tour guide specializing in China and Asia. Since he first traveled to the then still medieval Tibet in 1985, the Himalayas have never left him and so he still travels regularly to the roof of the world, always in search of new secrets in the region.