Berlin #

York Wegerhoff

The focus of York Wegerhoff’s photographic ‘short stories’ is nighttime Berlin. His analogue black-and-white series Berlin # keeps the balance between human closeness and urban anonymity, and speaks of the big-city atmosphere as well as moments of silence and desolation. The first images of the series were inspired by his nightly work as a taxi driver in Berlin. York shoots his street photographs directly from the taxi window. In the staged photographs, the protagonists are observed as though free from the camera’s gaze. The photos harbour stories that are not pre-determined; the sequence of the photos does not form a storyline, but aims to awaken and to inspire the viewer’s sentient imagination. The essential aspect of this series is not the amply documented legend of Berlin’s nightlife of the 1990s, but rather an off-centre view, toward an emptiness in the middle, a periphery in the centre of the city that is built over and devoid of any atmosphere today.