How to return home from distant lands without conventional means of transport? In 2014, Hübner began in Jordan, traveling by foot and hitchhiking, relying on the openness of strangers across cities and rural communities. Often unable to share a common language, he navigated encounters through gestures and presence. Curious about lives lived in motion, he allowed the road to set the direction. 

Over nearly three months, he crossed nine countries. He joined a family of goat herders climbing steep mountains, was naively detained on suspicion of illegal border crossing, witnessed both cohesion and tension in Israeli–Palestinian coexistence, traveled with Greek actors on a touring road show, crossed Turkey compressed in a van between a refrigerator and a washing machine, and encountered post-communist landscapes and memories.

Throughout the journey, he observed nature transforming in both expected and surprising ways — from the pale, scorched stone deserts of the Middle East to the lush green valleys of Central Europe. With each border crossed, the land shifted, as did faces, languages, gestures, and silences. Sometimes these transitions unfolded gradually; at other moments they were abrupt, imposed by artificial lines on a map. 

Eighty-Two Days on the Road, began in Jordan, continued through Israel and the West Bank, then by yacht to Cyprus and by ship across the Mediterranean to Turkey. From there, he traveled north to Sofia, Bulgaria, doubled back to the Black Sea, and continued through Romania, Hungary, and Austria before finally reaching his hometown of Nümbrecht in western Germany.

What began as a physical return became an early framework for Hübner’s later work: moving slowly, meeting people where they are, and attending to the fragile spaces between borders and everyday life. The journey foregrounded themes that continue to shape his practice — displacement and belonging, hospitality and exclusion, and the quiet politics embedded in ordinary encounters. 

These photographs and notes document a human-scale journey, recorded on seventeen rolls of film and in a worn notebook carried close.

How to return home from distant lands without conventional means of transport? In 2014, Hübner began in Jordan, traveling by foot and hitchhiking, relying on the openness of strangers across cities and rural communities.

Often unable to share a common language, he navigated encounters through gestures and presence. Curious about lives lived in motion, he allowed the road to set the direction.

Over nearly three months, he crossed nine countries. He joined a family of goat herders climbing steep mountains, was naively detained on suspicion of illegal border crossing, witnessed both cohesion and tension in Israeli–Palestinian coexistence, traveled with Greek actors on a touring road show, crossed Turkey compressed in a van between a refrigerator and a washing machine, and encountered post-communist landscapes and memories.