Wilhelm Schürmann

... everything too quiet

Wilhelm Schürmann

While the rest of Berlin-Mitte was being renovated and built up virtually everywhere, the area around Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz was overlooked. It wasn't until the beginning of the 2000s that it too began to see rapid development. Around the same time, Wilhelm Schürmann moved from Aachen to Berlin. Ever since, and always with his camera at hand, the photographer has doggedly taken the same paths through the city on his way to Rosa Luxemburg Platz, resulting in hundreds of previously unseen images.

Schürmann’s city portraits have made him a prominent representative of German documentary photography; they always depict Germany as an objective location. Yet the motifs only seem banal at first glance. Gradually, the images reveal a tentative approach to a space. Schürmann’s work is imbued with a subtle humour, while simultaneously and unobtrusively quoting photographic history.

For the first time, the Kunstverein at Rosa Luxemburg Platz presents a selection of the pictures taken between 2007 and 2019 in Berlin.