With Ute Mahler, photographer, OSTKREUZ – Agentur der Fotografen 
Werner Mahler, photographer, OSTKREUZ – Agentur der Fotografen 
Marit Lena Herrmann, art historian and Junior Curator at Foto Arsenal Vienna 
and Johanna M. Keller, Head Of Programme of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin

Between 1950 and 2022, Ludwig Schirmer (1950—1960), Werner Mahler (1977/78, 1998), and Ute Mahler (2021—2022) photographed the village of Berka in Thuringia. Their works tell the story of a village and its inhabitants, documenting societal change and political and social transformations from the post-war period to the reunification and into the present day. At the same time, this long-term project, which was not initially conceived as such, also narrates the story of a family of photographers. Johanna M. Keller speaks with Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, and curator Marit Lena Herrmann about the approaches taken in their individual works, the exploration of the posthumously discovered photographs from Ludwig Schirmer's archive, and the coming together of these works in a shared book and exhibition project.