lightbox installation at Checkpoint Charlie

Frank Thiel is best known for his almost 20-year preoccupation with the architectural, social, political, and cultural transformation of post-wall Berlin. Thiel’s works have become an integral part of the unfolding history of the city and one of its most important photographic records. He prefers the process of construction and transition over the finished results, and as such persistently documents the aesthetic manifestations of time and change. “The city suffers from an overdose of history,” he says. “It does not suffer from its sediments like other European cities, but from the consequences of its eruptions.” Monumental in scale, Thiel's photographs have moved away from macro visions of the city toward microcosmic depictions, capturing the surfaces of weathered buildings in an abstract, painterly fashion.

Berlin, Germany