Culture

European Month of Photography in Berlin

From euphoria to disillusionment

Curator Florian Ebner is explaining 'Cairo. Open town ' - one part of the exhibition taking place near the Brandenburg Gate. The exhibit depicts the euphoric beginnings of the revolution, which brought together people from all walks of life at Tahrir Sqaure, but also the victims of state violence. Images by photo journalists hang alongside those of activists taken with their mobile phones.

European Month of Photography in Berlin

Phones for resistance

Images like the one this man is taking, depicting the revolution in Cairo, went viral on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Some people wanted to simply show that they were there, while others collected the photos to prove that Egypt's state media was not reporting the whole story.

European Month of Photography in Berlin

Memories of Beijing

Chinese photographer Wang Fang, who has lived in Germany for many years, shows the developments in her hometown in "Beijing Memories." With a glance from a distance, she shares her recollections of a once familiar place. Bicyclists like this one can still be found, but today the image is an anachronism from a bygone time.

European Month of Photography in Berlin

London in Berlin

Up until the early 1990s, British, French, Americans and Russians lived in the sectors of Berlin which their respective countries administrated. With their families, they lived the same way they would have in their home countries. It was a parallel world, which the Berliners only occasionally caught a glimpse of - like, for example, at military parades.

European Month of Photography in Berlin

New neighbors

Under this motto "Foreign in their own country," students of the private photography school f16 took photos to document the lives of Berlin migrants. This collection provides insights into the daily lives of people who are often talked about, but whom few really know. Thisimage of a Muslim burial poses the question of who is more "foreign" - the participants or the photographer?

European Month of Photography in Berlin

What others dream of

The further away you are, the easier it is to create your own image of "the other." Europeans, for example, still romanticize Native Americans and North Americans dream of the Roma as the last nomadic people, living almost like people did in the Wild West. Two photographers traveled to North America and Romania to capture some subjective and humorous moments from the two groups.

European Month of Photography in Berlin

A unusual perspective

Experimental works also have their place at this festival. This work, "Down Under," shows a living room which appears to implode, like being sucked into a black hole. Photographer Michael H. Rohde turns gravity and perspective upside down, so that the viewer confusingly sees the kitchen from below, where - strangely - everything is in its proper place.

European Month of Photography in Berlin

Between trauma and hope

The Second Gulf War in the early 1990s brought a flood of images that were mostly all the same: burning oil wells and blurry infrared pictures. For Iraqi photographer Al Fadhil, the war marked the time his work became more political. This photo was taken in the 1970s, before he emigrated from Iraq.

Author: Andrea Kasiske / crl | Editor : Kate Bowen

CAIRO: OPEN CITY

Omnipresent eye

The exhibition examines images from a range of time-based media, including photography, video and the omnipresent eye of digital devices such as cell phones, which facilitate new possibilities for image distribution and alternative reporting. Pictured here is a still from Chris Michalski and Sebastian Stumpf's video "We didn't see it ourselves, but we heard about it" (2012).

CAIRO: OPEN CITY

Hypothetical society

Born in Cairo in 1981, Ahmed Kamel uses photography, video and drawing to explore how society constructs and idealizes identity through means of virtual representation. Pictured here is a drawing from his series "Images from a Hypothetical Society" (2009). The images are based on social network profile pictures, Kamel's "hypothetical society" is reduced to a mere gathering of pictorial icons.

CAIRO: OPEN CITY

Image dialogue

Divided into different chapters, each section of the exhibition aims to generate dialogue between the images. Images from newspapers are shown alongside photographs from private blogs and long-term documentary projects. Aly Hazaa's photograph, pictured, shows women marching to the Press Syndicate in Cairo on December 20, 2011.

CAIRO: OPEN CITY

Midnight excursions

Born in Berlin in 1978, Kaya Behkalam's work often centers around the phenomenon of migration and its consequences. His film "Excursions in the Dark" (2011) is a visual study of the streets of Cairo after midnight. "It is an attempt to trace the subconscious connections between the city's architecture, collective dreamscapes and political agency," Behkalam wrote.

CAIRO: OPEN CITY

Ocean of images

Special attention is paid in the exhibition to the genesis of images, their intentions and who or what is speaking in them. With the proliferation of digital recording devices, new challenges and opportunities for the testimonial aspect of images have emerged. Pictured here is Mosa'ab Elshami's photograph of protestors during a speech in Tahrir Square on April 8, 2011.

CAIRO: OPEN CITY

Unfinished process

Capturing the volatility of current political events, each chapter of the experimental exhibition is curated by prominent figures from Cairo, including the activists, journalists and curators Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk, as well as the bloggers Ahmad Gharbeia and Alex Nunns. Pictured here is Jonathan Rashad's "The Dragged Woman, Protest March to Defense Ministry, Cairo, April 27, 2012."

CAIRO: OPEN CITY

State surveillance

Jonathan Rashad is a freelance photojournalist based in Cairo who has dedicated his recent work to documenting the revolution. This image shows a soldier of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) recording protestors in front of the defense ministry who were calling for the abdication of the then ruling SCAF, Egypt's military junta, on April 28, 2012.

CAIRO: OPEN CITY

Turbulent times

On March 13, 2012, Egyptian photographer Fady Ezzat was assaulted by the Islamist MP Mohamed El-Kurshi of the Social Democratic Party while photographing a workers protest outside parliament. El-Kurshi later apologized. Pictured here, Ezzat's photograph of a student demonstration on March 20, 2011. "Cairo. Open City" runs through December 23 at the Museum for Photography in Braunschweig.

Author: Helen Whittle | Editor : Kate Bowen