In an installation comprised of photography and text, photographer Ingo van Aaren and writer David Wagner take up the concept of the flaneur. The idea of strolling through the city in a state of deliberate slowness and mindfulness and deriving one’s freedom and individuality through anonymity was once carried to extremes by Parisian bohemians who took their turtles out for a walk.

Van Aaren’s images follow Wagner and a tortoise as they saunter through nighttime Berlin. The photographer accompanies the unlikely couple through the quiet city, which is a very different one than we’re familiar with. His pictures portray turtle and writer alone at the Brandenburg Gate, on a deserted Alexanderplatz and at the desolate Oberbaum Bridge; they have the magically empty metropolis all to themselves. The resulting photographs touch the city, its texture and its history – through the interplay of text and image, these nocturnal works give rise to an aesthetic cosmos all their own.