Christian was 14 years old when the Berlin Wall came down. He experienced first hand the huge change for everyone.
"People didn't know how it would all turn out. It was very exciting - the start of something new. At first we visited the West a lot just to see what it was like, and although quite a few people moved away, I stayed"
It was inevitable that with so many people leaving everything from infrastructure to buildings began to fall into disrepair. That's when Christian started visiting abandoned buildings, sometimes with friends and sometimes on his own. Then much later, when a friend gave him a digital camera, he was able to capture the beauty of these old places.
He has a great eye and appreciation for the decaying structures
"They are very peaceful places because no-one ever goes there. The way they deteriorate, when nature starts to take over, reminds me that everything is transient. There's a feeling that it is the end of time and you don't find that kind of atmosphere anywhere else. Over the past seven or eight years I must have visited about 1,000 buildings in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and Poland. I have to go to a lot of places to get one good image or find something that excites me - many of them are just empty and not particularly beautiful"
Getting into a building to take the haunting photographs put Christian in peril and also potentially at risk from arrest by the authorities.
"I've had to find tunnels or climb through windows. I've travelled long distances to see a building and then found it's been torn down, or I simply couldn't get in. Sometimes I can tell there might be something special inside, but it's more like a game of chance - maybe I'll find something, maybe I won't. At some point I may hit the jackpot but there's a lot of work behind it - it's very hard to find this kind of beauty"
He once got a tip-off about an old doctor's surgery and it was plain to see that he was the first person to go inside for perhaps 10 or 15 years. Such a place had returned to nature with cobwebs giving a rather mystical appearance like going back in time. The way the light streamed in contributed to an amazing atmosphere.
Other buildings offering themselves to Richter's art included former industrial plants which had simply fallen into ruin, and psychiatric hospitals which had been closed down. There is no-one taking responsibility for them and certainly no money for their upkeep . It would not be viable economically or practically to preserve them.
"When the roof is falling apart and water comes through the ceilings, moss and lichen grow. If the windows that are not smashed are closed it can get very warm in summer and plants start to take over. Often there's a very mouldy smell, but I like it when nature starts taking the building back, and when things are blooming and growing inside"
When Christian comes across an old building in this state his skill is in imagining it in its former glory but there is tragedy in the knowledge that the majority have no prospect of ever being used again. Christian knows that it is of the utmost importance to keep the locations secret. This is to stop vandals damaging them because some people do not value them and when they get inside it is not just the plants taking over, but unfortunately it is people who are tearing down the bannisters or spraying graffiti tags on the walls.
Christian has his heart amongst these dinosaurs of former Eastern Bloc cities, towns and villages.
"If someone wanted to restore a building, they could write to me and if I thought they were actually the kind of person who might genuinely do something to help, then of course I would try put them in touch with the right people. That would be theoretically possible, but it hasn't happened yet"
"I never break in - I always try to find a way to get inside that doesn't involve damaging anything. That might mean going through a hole in the cellar, over a fence, through cracks, through a window - there's a lot of climbing involved. It's hard work and I have to be quite fit. Some buildings are so tightly secured that you have to be a real climber in order to get in without breaking anything"
There is a value in the art form created but it should not be forgotten that it remains illegal to go into these places. On many occasions Christian has been stopped by police , escorted out of buildings at least two or three times and issued with a notice. It has been more luck than anything that the authorities have never pressed any charges. Just taking photos and not showing any signs of being equipped to steal or vandalise has been a passport to being left free to wander in many situations.
"Some of these places are very atmospheric, very moody. I once photographed a former crematorium where bodies had been burned. It made a deep impression on me. Another time, I found a beautiful room with a skylight in an abandoned five-star hotel. I think it was a dining room - I could see the old columns and the dirt on the crumbling floor, and this enormous skylight was covered in curtains, and the light was spilling into the whole room. Then there was an old public bath, possibly built in the 19th Century, with the original changing rooms, magnificent columns and stucco on the ceiling, and of course a big pool in the middle, without water - but on the walls there were the beautiful colours they used back then, yellows and reds, big contrasts. It was really stunning"
The real beauty as Christian extols is in discovering these places. He states that the photos aren't exactly secondary but they come alongside the discovery itself. He takes the photos to give other people a sense of what used to exist.
"I think people the old buildings for the same reasons I do - there is beauty and sadness mixed up. I think people can identify with the fact that even if you have a wonderful, big house right now, at some point everything will decay. Even palaces and villas are transient"
See for yourself.
Photo used with kind permission of Christian Richter
(Interview originally with BBC World Service. November 2015)
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