Winter of the Century

Stephen Mooney

Stephen Mooney is a photographer, poet and filmmaker from the UK and has lived in Berlin since 2004. In Jahrhundertwinter (Winter of the Century) Mooney documents one of Berlin’s hardest winters on record and the terrible transient beauty of a continental winter which make the grey damp days of the UK pale in comparison: ‘The winter of 2009–2010 was the harshest I ever experienced. For more than two months the temperature didn't rise above minus five degrees. It snowed almost every day. It was hard, oppressive, and truly beautiful, and evoked feelings that reminded me of stories from my early youth, like memories resurfacing at a forgotten scent.’ Inspired by Eugene Atget, Mooney used a 9-by-12 cm plate camera to photograph the urban landscape of Berlin. Like Atget, the subjects of his photographs were corners of the city that modernisation missed. The choice of archaic, large-format analog technique also examines the changing face of photography in an increasingly digitised world of image production and consumption.