Berlin

Berlin was photogenic long before anyone knew what that word meant. When the first glass plate cameras caught the city, it was already posing—accidentally, grumpy, real. In the streets, carriages met dirt, light crossed glances, and still there was that pull of the picture-perfect. Alfred Döblin got it early: Berlin was motion, intoxication, sensory overload. A city that didn’t want to be looked at—it forced itself into your pupils.

In its Wilhelmine shine, Berlin stood proud in uniform—monumental, orderly, as if trying to smooth out its traces. But as soon as the new century dawned, the façade began to crack. Under the Weimar Republic, the cityscape became a mirror of nervous modernity. The city had no single face—it had a thousand. That’s what makes it so damn photogenic to this day: no angle shows it all, every shot is a contradiction.

Then came the black-and-white of rubble, the silence after the noise. In the postwar photos, window frames suddenly glowed like eyes. Photography stopped chasing beauty—it went after truth. And Berlin offered it raw, unfiltered, defiant. A city that never hides its shadows, but gives them room. Maybe that’s where its true elegance lies.

Later came walls, grime, new builds—and again something grew into the lens that defied definition. East or West, it was the same hunger for authenticity. Brecht once said, “Reality is what works.” In Berlin, everything always worked—bricks, rain, the smoke drifting above train stations. Even the ugly had style.

Today, you walk through Kreuzberg or Mitte and feel that Berlin already knows what it looks like—but doesn’t care to show it off. The light stays flat, the sky pale, but there’s still something in this city’s gaze that’s impossible to pin down—a mix of weariness and nerve. Every corner tells a story no filter could ever improve.

Berlin isn’t photogenic because it’s beautiful. It’s photogenic because it keeps re-exposing itself. Every generation puts a new negative on top of the last, every frame carries traces of demolition and rebuild. In the city’s wrinkles glimmers a leftover resistance to smoothness—and right there it flares up: the kind of beauty you just can’t buy.