Berlin has the highest density of shopping centers per inhabitant in Germany. Almost 70 of them have been built in the capital over the last few decades. In addition to the consumer-focused use of the centers, the spacious areas of the buildings have also become socio-cultural places of encounter. The interior of the centers is often a remnant from another era and an informal meeting place for a wide variety of social groups. Due to globalized and digitalized retail structures, the shopping center is increasingly losing its relevance as a place of consumption. While retailers are withdrawing from the buildings and the flow of visitors is decreasing, real estate developers are fantasizing about urban transformation concepts for the department stores of the future. But what remains when the consumption-oriented concept of the shopping center no longer works?
Text: Esther Ahr
The series was exhibited within the group exhibition things are closer than they seem in 2025 as part of European Month of Photography in Berlin as well as Foto Wien in Vienna, both together with Sensored Collective.

Berlin wächst. Laut einer Studie fehlen in der Hauptstadt 130.000 bezahlbare Wohnungen, und die einkommensschwächeren Bevölkerungsgruppen werden immer weiter an den Stadtrand verdrängt. Auch im Berlin der 1920er-Jahre sind die Randbereiche außerhalb des Rings Hoffnungsträger für eine neue Wohnraumentwicklung, während die Metropole im Inneren aus allen Nähten zu platzen scheint. Als Antwort auf den massiven Wohnraummangel und die katastrophalen hygienischen Zustände in den Berliner Mietskasernen reformierte der Architekt Bruno Taut in Zusammenarbeit mit dem damaligen Stadtbaurat Martin Wagner den Wohnungsbau für die Arbeiterklasse. Getreu dem Motto «Licht, Luft und Sonne für alle» entstehen mehrere Reformsiedlungen, die bezahlbare und komfortable Wohnungen für die Arbeiterklasse bereitstellten. Vier dieser Siedlungen tragen heute den Titel UNESCO-Weltkulturerbe und sind für ihre farbenfrohen Fassaden international bekannt. Doch fast 100 Jahre später stellt sich die Frage: Was bleibt vom ursprünglichen Reformgedanken in einer Zeit, die von Wohnungsmarktdruck und privatwirtschaftlichen Interessen dominiert wird?
Text: Esther Ahr

Die Serie Teil war Teil der Gruppenausstellung Heimweh in der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung in Berlin (05/2025 – 11/2025), kuratiert von Maria Sewcz and Tobias Kruse.

Hotel rooms are stacked up to form a building complex, small blue tiles are laid over the moving surface of a pool landscape, with palm trees in front of it. Over the last few decades, vacation destinations in the tourism industry have developed into homogeneous and monofunctional spaces, creating corresponding typologies. Hotel chains, leisure temples and consumption offers characterize the image of these scenery-like places. People spend their vacations here for a perfectly arranged period of a few days to several weeks, taking a break from everyday life. The temporal cycle of these places is divided into high season, low season, mid-season and pre-season. To ensure that everything looks and functions perfectly during the few months of the main season, they are intensively prepared in advance. An intermediate state, without the numerous holidaymakers, almost deserted. Only the occasional lone caretaker appear.
To ensure that everything looks and functions perfectly for the holidaymakers in the short main season, an intensive period of work is required in the pre-season. The photographs capture this in-between state – the dystopia before the vacation utopia?
The tourism industry transforms almost every vacation destination into uniform and interchangeable urban land- scapes through its typical and homogeneous building
structures.

The series was exhibited within the group exhibition Verträumt in 2023 at Kunstraum Potsdamer Straße in Berlin, curated by Artburst Berlin and published in Trans Magazin der ETH Zürich, Nr. 42 TIME.

»In der Stadtrandsiedlung Malchow scheinen sich Erzählungen verschiedener Zeitkontexte zu einer verschwommenen und uneindeutigen Gegenwart zu verweben.«

Text: Esther Ahr
Die Serie wurde im SITUATION - Magazin für räumliche Fragen, Nr. 02 Who’s your Daddy? zusammen mit einem Text von Esther Ahr veröffentlicht und bei Grotto im Rahmen des beim Project Space Festivals 2024 in Berlin ausgestellt.

Berlin is growing. It is spoken of a stressed market. As a result, interest is increasingly shifting to the 'second tier' of the city, behind the ring of railroad lines. Here, in contrast to the more and more homogenous inner city, Berlin is rich in diverse typologies, lifestyles and landscapes. Especially in times of overlapping crises, the question should be asked how the city and its surroundings could develop. In this debate, it is essential to actively incorporate the periphery. In order to find answers and strategies for an adequate future of the periphery, it must first be understood and questioned. An Inventory of the Border.
In a photographic field research Berlin was circled once on its city border to Brandenburg. Through an alternative, subjective view on the city's edge, its identity as well as possible potentials are renegotiated.
The border of Berlin is about 230 kilometers long, it is divided into 10 research segments. One analog 35mm film of 36 photos is exposed per section.

10 x 23 km x 36 photos = 360 photos + 360° border.

The selected images were taken on different sections and subsequently combined and curated, in order to identify overarching themes, relationships and identities of the urban fringe.