The pub is home, den of iniquity, and a favourite spot to talk, keel over and get up again. Pubs look back on a long tradition as places of refuge, and they provide company: this is where people get together to discuss, talk politics and make history. Gambling, addiction and the loss of social status are part of the reality.

With regard to the EMOP Berlin theme, the closeness among pub-goers is inevitable. And so in German, the word for pub, ‘Kneipe’, comes from the verb ‘kneipen’, which originally meant something akin to ‘being close together’. Three photographers approach these parallel universes in their respective artistic languages: Stefanie Schweiger turns her attention to people, encountering them with sensitivity and maintaining a balance between nearness and distance; Friederike von Rauch explores architecture, space and atmosphere; and Anna Lehmann-Brauns inquires into space as a place of remembrance.

In this collaborative project, the artists combine photographic works with text, video and sound – finding images for a culture that still has its secrets, yet is slowly but surely dying out.