From Zero to Hundred

Quite early on, we humans had a problem: how many sheep are there actually? How far is it to the next cave? The need to record quantities, count days and determine fair taxes drove our ancestors to invent one of the most powerful tools in history – numbers. Numbers became a system of order that helped us to understand reality.

But from the very beginning, numbers were much more than mere counting aids. In addition to their sober numerical value, they always had a symbolic, sometimes sacred value. The Bible tells us that God ordered everything according to measure, number and weight, there is the Trinity, and apocalyptic numbers tell of the mystical power of digits. Probably all cultures in the world know sacred or magical numbers.

Numbers organise, but they also recognise. What is counted and organised can be precisely determined – and what can be precisely determined can be understood, calculated and predicted. Proportions define beauty, calendars tame time, and number systems – from the Babylonian sexagesimal system to our decimal system – made civilisation possible in the first place. The invention of zero, the idea that nothingness can be a number, was probably one of the most ingenious ideas in the history of mathematics. And to those who believe that numbers are cold, rational matters, let it be said: even Douglas Adams knew that the answer to life, the universe and everything else is simply 42.

Today, numbers are found in every computer chip, in the genetic code of life, in the mysteries of creation.
The more we count, the greater the temptation to reduce everything to numbers. Algorithms now decide what news we read, what credit we get, what value a human life has on the insurance market. Financial markets race through billions of transactions in milliseconds – controlled by formulas that hardly anyone understands anymore. Numbers, once a tool of humankind, have become a powerful master. And yet, without numbers, we would be blind.

This series is a photographic homage to numbers and counting.