Unembellished—People, Movements, Cityscapes

Photographs from Friedrichshain–Kreuzberg 1990–2018

Heiner Bernd, Nanette Fleig, Florian Günther, Ann-Christine Jansson, Ursula Kamischke, Siebrand Rehberg, Ellen Röhner, Michael Sauer

A shroud of gray and the smell of coal are history: Friedrichshain–Kreuzberg is hip and colorful, and the changes that have taken place over the past three decades have been fast and challenging. Reason enough to present for the first time new works by eight art photographers from the two boroughs that document the social, urban, and political changes of a city space whose mystical aura dates back to the 1970s. From Berlin’s poorhouse to the stylish in-neighborhoods; from run-down districts to party boulevards; from political slogans to art in the urban space, street art, and advertising banners; from happenings and violent demonstrations to angry demonstrations and pleasure parades; from hidden gay rendezvous to an open, self-confident queer community; from the demise of corner pubs to the birth of cocktail bars. At the center of it all are the people that fill this city with life, in what’s often a fantasy-filled struggle to survive. Approximately eighty photographs, both analogue and digital, black-and-white and color. None of it can be used for city marketing. All of it is unembellished.