Ordinary City

Sabine von Bassewitz

In the public mind, Neukölln is more than just one of Berlin’s city districts; its name has become an autonomous term and frequently serves as a synonym for inner-city turmoil, resistance to integration, and the dole. At the same time, Neukölln is increasingly making a name for itself as a ‘Hipsterland’; due to the influx of a higher-earning social class, it’s regarded as the spearhead of gentrification.
The photographs in Sabine von Bassewitz’s series Ordinary City resist attributions such as these. On the one hand, her Neukölln images depict what we always thought we knew about this district; on the other, they provide surprising insights into a variety of Neukölln’s sundry communities and portray places of reflection, some of which have a village quality. They point to the kind of social changes occurring all across Europe. By rejecting our clichéd notions, von Bassewitz succeeds in making us curious about the aesthetic of the everyday and the many stories, experiences, and personal worlds waiting to be discovered in Neukölln and elsewhere in major cities across Europe.