The Shortlist of the Alfred Fried Photography Award 2015
The Berlin Wall Strip Today
It has been more than 25 years since the Berlin Wall fell. The traces of the transition, the interplay of change and memory along the path of the Berlin Wall, which divided the city for 28 years and cost the lives of so many people, is the topic of this work. The combination of famous places and unfamiliar areas generates an arc of suspense connected with the central theme of the former death zone.
There are official places of remembrance, such as the Berlin Wall Memorial (Bernauer Straße), Checkpoint Charlie and Eastside Gallery. Or private initiatives like the watchtower at Kieler Eck, which Jürgen Litfin has turned into a site to commemorate his brother, who was the first victim of the shoot-to-kill order of the German Democratic Republic.
In the meantime most of this one-time border and death strip have become invisible. It has been transformed and developed to be part of a new urban and political reality. Nonetheless it also remains a space which has changed so many people´s lives and is inscribed with so memories. In this sense it is a hybrid space.
The thousands of Japanese cherry trees, which have planted along part of the death strip, are just a wonderful example of how the past can be transformed into a recreational space where people can meet, walk and enjoy themselves. The new homes and green spaces, in which families live and children can play, reiterate this point, too, that no wall or border dividing people can stand for ever. This is what I wanted to show.
My photos are an attempt to capture a sense of what this significant piece of world history actually means and to encourage people to explore this historically vibrant space where the Berlin Wall once stood.
It has been more than 25 years since the Berlin Wall fell. The traces of the transition, the interplay of change and memory along the path of the Berlin Wall, which divided the city for 28 years and cost the lives of so many people, is the topic of this work. The combination of famous places and unfamiliar areas generates an arc of suspense connected with the central theme of the former death zone.
There are official places of remembrance, such as the Berlin Wall Memorial (Bernauer Straße), Checkpoint Charlie and Eastside Gallery. Or private initiatives like the watchtower at Kieler Eck, which Jürgen Litfin has turned into a site to commemorate his brother, who was the first victim of the shoot-to-kill order of the German Democratic Republic.
In the meantime most of this one-time border and death strip have become invisible. It has been transformed and developed to be part of a new urban and political reality. Nonetheless it also remains a space which has changed so many people´s lives and is inscribed with so memories. In this sense it is a hybrid space.
The thousands of Japanese cherry trees, which have planted along part of the death strip, are just a wonderful example of how the past can be transformed into a recreational space where people can meet, walk and enjoy themselves. The new homes and green spaces, in which families live and children can play, reiterate this point, too, that no wall or border dividing people can stand for ever. This is what I wanted to show.
My photos are an attempt to capture a sense of what this significant piece of world history actually means and to encourage people to explore this historically vibrant space where the Berlin Wall once stood.
