C/O Berlin exhibition captures Berlin's 1990s transformation through OSTKREUZ photography

C/O Berlin presents over 200 photographs from OSTKREUZ, the agency founded in East Berlin in 1990, documenting the city's complex transformation after reunification. The exhibition captures both euphoric optimism and darker realities, with Harald Hauswald's image of suited men surveying a crane-filled skyline symbolizing rampant redevelopment. Youth movements appear through images of spiky-haired ravers at the Love Parade and iconic clubs like Tresor, while Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Wrapped Reichstag (1995) looms as symbolic backdrop in Annette Hauschild's photograph. Ute Mahler's series documents a neo-Nazi father in Lichtenberg teaching his children the Nazi salute, pointing a gun from a window. A video upstairs explores reunification tensions, with Mahler reflecting on East Germans left unemployed and disillusioned. The exhibition includes long wall texts providing political and social context, particularly after Berlin's reinstatement as Germany's capital in 1990. Sibylle Bergemann's image shows fallow land by the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz in 1990, while Werner Mahler captures the Fall of the Wall in 1989. Anne Schönharting contributes Techno 2000, documenting the era's club culture. The exhibition runs until 22 January, presenting a portrait of a city wrestling with deep, often irreconcilable tensions between East and West. Duncan Ballantyne-Way authored the accompanying text.