“In the Crack of Time” – Avenue Images by Siebrand Rehberg

Siebrand Rehberg moved to West Berlin in 1969, accomplished his coaching on the Lette-Verein from 1971 to 1973, and have become a scholar of Michael Schmidt. As a contract photojournalist (working for Die Zeit and Der Spiegel, amongst others) and later as a scientific photographer on the Technical University of Berlin, he primarily documented his personal neighborhood: Kreuzberg SO 36. At the time, the district was enclosed on three sides by the Wall—a “backyard of West Berlin,” marked by battle ruins, looming demolition tasks, crumbling facades, and day by day life proper on the demise strip.

Rehberg’s photographs don’t depict grand heroes, however moderately the individuals who formed on a regular basis life throughout that period of upheaval: youngsters taking part in on demolition websites and in entrance of the Wall, hippies with infants of their arms, Turkish visitor employee households, squatters, a packed VW bus certain for the journey house to Turkey, rows of trash cans, and forbidden border indicators. With a eager sense of sunshine, composition, and human dignity, he captures the “crack in time”—that fragile second between division, decay, and social change.

In 2014, collector Marc Barbey wrote on the event of the primary main presentation of the collection “Signals of a New Beginning” (Collection Regard): “I have rarely seen images of Berlin from the 1970s of such quality.”

Today, greater than 35 years after the autumn of the Wall, these images tackle a brand new, pressing relevance. While the Berlin Wall is well known worldwide as an emblem of overcoming division and its remaining remnants proceed to draw vacationers from everywhere in the world, new partitions and fences are rising elsewhere—at borders, in cities, in minds. Rehberg’s images remind us that whereas bodily limitations might fall, the “rift of time” persists in a special kind: as a reminder of the fragility of freedom and solidarity.

The exhibition thus spans a formidable arc throughout 5 many years and highlights Rehberg as probably the most genuine avenue photographers of Berlin’s period of renewal.