The exhibition Ein Dorf 1950–2022 is a long-term project by three photographers; it’s also a family story that illuminates aspects of time and change in a unique way. The project began in Berka, Thuringia, and yet it extends far beyond the village’s borders. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Ludwig Schirmer, Ute Mahler’s father, worked as a master miller in Berka; photography was his great passion, however. A few years after the end of World War II, he began to document everyday life, celebrations, and his own experiences in the village. In 1977, without knowing of his father-in-law’s pictures, Werner Mahler decided to take photographs in Berka for his diploma thesis at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts. In 1998, the magazine Der Stern invited him to update his work to include the changes after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fourth group of works, which Ute Mahler shot in Berka in 2021/22, offers an independent view that can also, however, be seen as following in the family tradition of the three other photographic projects.

The photographs present a village over a period of 70 years. They pose questions about continuity and change; about home, childhood, moving away, and coming back; about old and new; and about the familiar and the unknown.