Peter Piller’s Von Erde schöner is based on an archive of aerial photographs of German single-family houses.

The images were taken in the 1970s and 1980s by a company that photographed private homes from the air and then offered the prints for sale to the owners. In 2002, Piller acquired thousands of these photographs and began to reorganize them according to his own categories.

The result is not a conventional documentary study of housing, but an artistic archive shaped by selection, comparison, and repetition. Piller focuses on what the original commercial photographs unintentionally reveal: gardens, paths, garages, pools, construction sites, empty lawns, provisional structures, and the often awkward relation between domestic architecture and its surroundings.

Through his method of sorting and sequencing, the ordinary aerial view becomes a study of social patterns, suburban order, private property, and visual accident. Von Erde schöner shows how found photographic material can be transformed into a precise and often quietly humorous observation of everyday life, landscape, and the built environment.