Live in a metropolis lengthy sufficient, and there comes a degree the place you cease experiencing it in chapters and begin experiencing it in books – durations of time that really feel full and nearly tangible, like objects outdoors of your self. For Vincent Wechselberger, that shift started final 12 months round his twenty seventh birthday and culminated this August, as he marked ten years in Berlin.
“Berlin is a city where I saw myself, found myself, lost myself, and found myself again,” he tells Dazed, reflecting on “the beauty and the chaos” of the previous decade. “Recently, though, I’ve felt a shift in my own energy and in how I want to live my life. I feel like I’ve come to the end of an era.” Spanning photos from his arrival in 2016 on the age of 18, contemporary from small-town Austria, to 2026, his new photobook, Dreams and How to Keep Them, is that period made manifest.
At its coronary heart are the individuals who formed the individual he grew to become right here. Portraits of family and friends are interspersed with these of strangers and lovers who handed into his life for one sleepless weekend, or maybe not more than a kiss on a dancefloor. The ebook expands in scope by Wechselberger’s intercourse work to incorporate scenes from resort rooms around the globe – Paris, Bangkok, Mexico – and contracts once more by still-life pictures of the objects and rituals that texture this period as a lot because the milestones: bananas, baggies, ashtrays, money on counters, strains on telephone screens. “It’s a book about love as much as it’s a book about breakfast,” he smiles.
While Dreams provides a diaristic perception into the photographer’s shifting inside panorama, it additionally traces the altering environment of town. It follows the unfettered hedonism of the late 2010s into the extraordinary interiority of Covid lockdowns, when the events moved from golf equipment to flats; the intoxicating rush of the early 2020s, as town got here alive once more however struggled to seek out its footing; and the political turbulence of the years since.
For anybody aware of Berlin – and maybe even for many who aren’t – there’s one thing in regards to the mild particularly that triggers pangs of second-hand nostalgia: the smooth sigh of summer time shadows throughout lake days and open airs; the gold tinge of early autumn dusting topless our bodies on windowsills; the shy rose-milk of a winter daybreak that side-eyes the get together however doesn’t come to say it. Wechselberger brings you alongside for all of it, as evening slips into day into evening, weekends into months into years.
“Many people say that Berlin is a city for lost souls, which I don’t think is true. I think there are so many beautiful, creative people here who just get lost in the rhythm of the city and also the German system,” he contends. “I spiral sometimes, I run in circles. But lately, my friends and I want to break free from that rhythm and put our energies into other things. For me, it’s my creative career.”
This touches on the paradox of Berlin: the way it feeds creativity however may distract from it. “Sometimes I wish I never got caught up in the substances and the scene. But then it’s because I’m dancing half-naked at the party with everyone else that they trust me and open up in front of my camera,” Wechselberger continues. “I think I often want it all: to be completely inside the situation, experiencing it, but also stepping outside of it to capture the moment.”
Just as bodily contact is in every single place within the pictures, additionally it is current in Wechselberger’s course of. “I hand-printed the images myself in the darkroom, with the help of my friend Cy Klock,” he explains. “I’m a very affectionate person. I love body contact and holding and being held. It’s what I am doing with the photographs: gathering them, keeping them close, but also, in a sense, letting go of them.”
There’s a double that means lodged within the ebook’s title. Dreams are without delay future issues – imagined, desired, moved in direction of – and likewise the realm of reminiscence, populated by individuals and locations from our previous. Dreams and How to Keep Them tries to carry each without delay. It’s Wechselberger’s manner of memorialising the last decade that made him whereas not shedding sight of the place he’s going. As he writes within the ebook’s afterword: “I see it as the first true goodbye as I grow into myself.”
Published by SMUT Press, Dreams and How to Keep Them is launching in Berlin at BAM Practice on 10 September 2026, and will probably be on present in Wechselberger’s first solo exhibition at 1014 Gallery in London, 17 September – 16 October 2026.