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Christian Stemmler, Anfang/Beginning: Berlin 1994-99
€ 42.00
In the early 90s, Berlin cracked open. The Wall had fallen, communism had collapsed, and the city became a sprawl of abandoned buildings and industrial ruins. While Germany dragged itself through reunification, a new youth culture took root in the cracks, turning squats into homes, derelict spaces into clubs, and dancing through the shadows of what came before them. Among them was a 17-year-old photographer, Christian Stemmler, newly moved into a squat, camera in hand, ready to document the world around him as it changed.
The result is ANFANG/BEGINNING: BERLIN 1994-99, Stemmler’s new book of photographs taken between 1994 and 1999. Shot on film and never before published, the photographs are an archive of a time that laid the foundation for much of today’s club culture. Meaning ‘beginning,’ the book captures a city and culture on the edge of reinvention. “Back then, it was the beginning of my independent adult life, but also the beginning of a new political system. The GDR (former East Germany), the country most of us were born in and grew up in, no longer existed,” explains Stemmler.
At the time, the city was still scarred by war and division. “It really felt like a black-and-white movie,” Stemmler recalls. “Especially in winter, which in Berlin meant seven to eight months of the year.” Much of the city centre was still marked by bombed-out ruins. But it was in those empty spaces that something colourful began to grow. “That’s where the clubs moved in,” he says. “We dyed our hair bright colours to lift our spirits in all that tristesse, and we filled those spaces with life and joy.”
While he no longer frequents Berlin’s nightlife – he stopped going out regularly in 2005 and has attended only a few parties in the last decade – Stemmler’s love for authentic club culture remains untouched. Now, he spends most of his time in Tbilisi, where “the original spirit of clubbing is still alive, partly in resistance to those in power oppressing the LGBTQ+ community,
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