Contemporary photography from Berlin
Artists: Stefanie Bürkle – Daniela Comani – Oliver Godow – Armin Häberle – Frank Hülsbömer– Jens Liebchen – Wiebke Loeper – Gerhard Kassner – Christian Rothmann – Brigitte Waldach
Curated by: Matthias Harder, Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin
 Portrait: Berlin
 Soon two decades will have passed since the Berlin Wall fell, the line of demarcation between East and West, symbolically concentrated in the former front-line city. Since the reunification, Berlin has changed radically. Almost the whole social structure was called into question; the result is a politically, intellectually and architectonically transformed city. Artists and gallerists from all over the world have settled in the innumerable factory buildings, especially in the formerly Eastern part of the city, and they transform Berlin into a huge site of production and exchange of contemporary art, which is unparalleled. Numerous photographers have accompanied those processes of change – and had a share in shaping it visually.
In this compilation, the photographic view is focussed on the people and their spaces. Oliver Godow searches for the traces of the ephemeral in the city’s interiors, in timeless, utopian enclosures full of Beckettian absurdity. Stefanie Buerkle looks for strange façade elements which stand around the Potsdamer Platz area. These architectural models were placed there to be chosen by the architects who came to the German capital by the end of the 1990s. Frank Huelsboemer finds architectural structures beyond the new urban facadelike aspect, for instance inside Friedrich Schinkel’s former “Bauakademie“ Unter den Linden, which still is in large parts a mere scaffolding with superimposed foil-facade and is located opposite the old City Palace, or rather the “Palast der Republik“ (Palace of the Republic), the prestige building of the perished GDR par excellence which has been already dismantled.
Jens Liebchen’s interest in photography is global topics and their visualisation, f.i. the examination of the borders of airports and their surroundings. In his current series “Port A” he subtly approaches to Berlin’s three airports. Armin Haeberle occasionally also directs his photographic focus at airports: he shows state visits and other official events in long exposed pictures. The protagonists actually at the centre have erased themselves through the long exposure time.
A city like Berlin – which, in the meantime, turned into a myth again worldwide – is not only represented by buildings or politics, but also by the people who live and work in it. Wiebke Loeper thematizes very personal, even intimate themes of growing up in and coming closer to Berlin - with her photographic work “Moll 31“, a confrontation of pictures shortly before the demolition of her tenement and childhood pictures taken of the same place. Also Daniela Comani, an Italian artist living in Berlin, remains personal in her black and white photographical series with the title “Eine glueckliche Ehe“ (A happy marriage), in which she adopts the male as well as the female part.
Gerhard Kassner as official photographer of the annual film festival Berlinale looks the international actors and directors, who visit the city for the festival, in the face. Christian Rothmann unites in his picture series “you and me“, which he creates on all continents as well as in his hometown Berlin, in each case an atmospheric, abstract picture of urban live as well as a portrait of someone who in turn holds a portrait of the photographer into the camera, occasionally also in front of Berlin sights.
Brigitte Waldach, finally, in various ways conciliates those two realms, the places and people in Berlin: on an empty attic of a historical building, everyday objects are arranged peculiarly. In front of this scenery, the Berlin actress Fritzi Haberlandt acts in two roles: as girl in a dress she has grown out of, and as adult woman, who sketches text passages from Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina on the walls; a surreal, claustrophobic scenery emerges.

Matthias Harder

	Brigitte Waldach From the series: sichtung rot – injektionen von wirklichkeit (injections of reality) (Model: the Berlin actress Fritzi Haberlandt; photography: Gerhard Kassner) Berlin, 2006, inkjets prints
Stefanie Bürkle Face-Façades Berlin 1995-2007, inkjet prints
	Frank Hülsbömer From the series: Brandwände and Bauakademie Berlin 1999/2002, lightjet prints