"The Düsseldorf-based photographer Joachim Storch (born 1943, studied photography with Gottfried Jäger, Bielefeld and Arno Jansen, Cologne) deliberately moves along the narrow border between abstract and documentary photography. His photo series consist of images that deal systematically and conceptually with the real world. Looking at the photographs in detail, their almost painful austerity is striking.

Storch meticulously and technically perfectly photographs details of architectural interiors, mostly of well-known European buildings that stand for a certain idea / style in architecture, e.g. the Bibliotheque National in Paris (neoclassical), the Comic Museum in Brussels in Belgian Art Nouveau (architect: Horta, ca.1890), in The Hague the Museum of Modern Art - in a style between Bauhaus and Art Deco of the 1920s as well as the special 1950s in Cologne (WDR building). Entirely in the spirit of the "generative photography" of his teacher Gottfried Jäger from Bielefeld, his work focuses on the representation of the various elements of architecture in photographic signs. Their detachment from the architectural context and transformation into a pictorial language by means of photography gives rise to a world of images that, removed from their real counterpart, shows a life of its own. Joachim Storch uses the large format to give his pictures detail and accuracy of representation. Herein and in his precisely thought-out compositions in form and colour lies the essential charm of his works."

Burkhard Arnold, in focus, Galerie am Dom, Cologne, January 2004