Between gravel paths and industrial wastelands, between floodplains and harbour basins, Ulrich Wust follows the course of the Elbe through Magdeburg on extensive photographic walks-on foot, with his camera, attentive and persistent. Bringing together more than 200 photographs taken between 2021 and 2025, this volume forms a multifaceted portrait of the river as seen from the city, both upstream and downstream (stromauf / stromab). Beginning at the gauge house near the Strombrucke, Wust's route leads southwards to the rural outskirts and northwards to the waterway junction with the trough bridge of the Mittelland Canal. He never crosses the Elbe. His gaze remains fixed on the western bank-a place where the relationship between city and river has been shaped over centuries by separation, barriers, and later by an industrially driven process of reconnection. Wust's photographs are not a documentary inventory. They offer neither tourist views nor picturesque postcard scenes. Instead, peripheral zones, derelict sites, abandoned industrial areas, newly created promenades, and quiet stretches of water are condensed into a subjective visual landscape. The deserted scenes appear like stages after the departure of their actors-places where history has settled and the present is tentatively taking shape. Wust's subjective perspective combines analytical clarity with poetic precision, inviting us to rediscover the relationship between city and river.