Hardcover
80 pages
49 duplex images
Print over board
Size: 29.8 × 24 cm
Text by Thomas Weski
English
Kominek Books
From 2012 to 2019, Mark Steinmetz photographed the streets of Berlin. This work comes together in the book Berlin Pictures, published by Kominek Books in 2020. The hard and soft sides of Berlin are portrayed through poetic and atmospheric images, with the distinctive sensitivity that characterizes Mark Steinmetz’s work.
What differentiates Mark Steinmetz’s photographs from those of his contemporaries is his exceptional and elusive ability to create images that are both beautiful and compassionate. His photographs contain a profound sense of concern that is not easily captured. By “concern,” I do not mean it in the sense of the “concerned photographer,” but rather in its everyday meaning: a genuine attention and care toward the world and its inhabitants.
Mark’s ability to read the terrain and move through it with patience, humility, and ethical consideration for his subjects gives his work a deeply human quality. His photographs reveal a clear and beautifully measured intention.
Steinmetz has photographed in many different parts of the world. Although much of his work is associated with the United States, Italy and Paris have also provided important settings for his photographic journeys. His ability to observe and understand a place with humble curiosity is reflected in his books, each focused on a specific location. This becomes especially compelling when he turns his attention toward urban environments, particularly cities shaped by complex histories.
Berlin is a city of ever-present ghosts. Its recent history remains visible, creating a sense of melancholy in which its inhabitants move beneath the weight of grey skies and fragmented historical traces scattered throughout the urban landscape. Yet Berlin also carries a remarkable capacity for hope, renewal, and reconstruction. It was once said that one travels to Berlin to become lost; perhaps today one travels there in order to be found.
Berlin is a city of contrasts and progress precisely because of its historical fabric. Its streets, brick buildings, and architectural layers reveal a continuous dialogue between intimacy and memory.
Steinmetz visited Berlin between 2012 and 2019, photographing its streets and inhabitants with the care and compassion he brings to all his subjects. In his Berlin images, we find the closeness between couples and strangers that appears throughout his work, while also discovering a new layer: an exploration of the city itself.
Architecture, streets, and small details align within Steinmetz’s viewfinder, and each frame—whether inhabited or empty—is rendered with a sensitive awareness of the present moment. Berlin is a unique city, and with Berlin Pictures, Steinmetz adds a new perspective: one less defined by the weight of history and more attentive to the acceptance of its present condition.
— Brad Feuerhelm