From March 1 to 31, 2025, visitors can experience the 11th edition of EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography with around 100 exhibitions. The central festival exhibition of the largest biennial photography festival in Germany will open at the festival center in the Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg. It takes up the leitmotif of the festival as a whole – what stands between us – and explores photography as a medium of chronicle; it deals with social conflicts and creates space for dialog.
Image above: Akademie der Künste Hanseatenweg, Foto: Timo Ohler.
The central festival exhibition, which opens on February 27, presents projects by around 20 international artists that focus on various contemporary conflicts. Nationalist tendencies or conspiracy narratives, disenchantment with the state, violence from the right, an intensified asylum policy and the increasing isolation of Europe at its external borders are the predominant themes. The title of the exhibition was zwischen uns steht alludes to the trigger points that these issues hold in store. At the same time, it addresses a counterpart and offers dialog. A unifying moment for the artists is that they want to tell stories with their medium and focus on individual experiences and fates with the camera in “micro-histories”. With these chronicles, the artists refer to larger contexts and political issues that are hidden behind their stories. The photographs (but also film material) serve as traces of events that are often framed in text and classified in this way – be it in notes, reports, interviews or literary formats, but also in digital forms of production such as 3D video works and virtual simulations.
In contrast to demanding, complaining or announcing in large speech bubbles – as has become common in social media – the exhibition breaks through these dynamics by taking a critical distance from its medium. Instead of asserting, it asks in small narrative pieces “what stands between us” – and examines, for example, the connection between origin and educational opportunities, the ongoing exclusion of people with a history of migration, experiences of the immediate post-reunification period or the radicalization of parts of society. Since analyzing the current state of society is always about questioning one’s own history, the exhibition brings together works by contemporary artists as well as materials from the archives of the Akademie der Künste, such as the archives of John Heartfield and Walter Benjamin.
Curated by: Maren Lübbke-Tidow, Artistic Director EMOP Berlin 2025 at Kulturprojekte Berlin.
With works by Ilit Azoulay, Yevgenia Belorusets, Cana Bilir-Meier, Hannah Darabi & Benoît Grimbert, Fungi (aka Phuong Tran Minh), Bérangère Fromont, Beate Gütschow, Raisan Hameed, John Heartfield, Leon Kahane, Susanne Keichel, Simon Lehner, Boris Mikhailov, Pınar Öğrenci, Helga Paris, Einar Schleef, Maya Schweizer, Wenke Seemann, Christine Würmell, Tobias Zielony and a text by Walter Benjamin.
At the same time, the EMOP Berlin’s partner exhibition, A Village 1950-2022, curated by Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler and Ludwig Schirmer, opens at the Akademie der Künste. It shows a long-term photographic project about the Thuringian village of Berka, in which the changes to the place and the community over 70 years become visible.
The exhibitions was zwischen uns steht and Ein Dorf 1950-2022. Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler and Ludwig Schirmer are open beyond the festival period until May 4, 2025.
WHEN?
Opening: Thursday, February 27, 2025, 7 pm
Special opening hours during the EMOP Opening Days:
Thursday, February 27, 2025, from 19 h
Friday, February 28, 2025, 14-22 h
Saturday, March 01, 2025, 11-19 h
Opening hours:
Monday closed
Tuesday -Friday 2pm-7pm
Saturday -Sunday, public holidays 11-19
WHERE?
EMOP Berlin c/o Akademie der Künste
Hanseatenweg 10
10557 Berlin
COSTS?
Entrance fees:
10 EUR (combined ticket was zwischen uns steht. Photography as a medium of chronicle and A village 1950-2022. Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler and Ludwig Schirmer. Admission free up to 18 years and on Tuesdays).
Reduced admission 7 EUR
Admission is free of charge during the EMOP Opening Days.
