Galerie Springer is showcasing three related artists - Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, and Ludwig Schirmer – for EMOP 2025. Farbenrausch (Colour Rush) presents a selection of rare colored prints by the three artists, creating an engaging inner dialogue between a father, his daughter, and her husband. A conversation done through the photographic medium, the three artists speak of their surroundings with both poetry and humor.
Akademie Der Künste - Hanseatenweg is also presenting an exhibition on these three artists. Ein Dorf 1950-2022 (A Village 1950-2022) is a touching work that covers the same German village through their distinct lenses. It’s a poignant document of the same familial dialogue across time. The two exhibitions collectively become a reflection of Germany’s history in general, both through advertising and daily memories.
For decades, the Swedish photographer Ann-Christine Jansson has documented with a poignant eye Berlin and its people. Zeitreise (A Journey through time) at Alte Feuerwache is exhibiting her photographs of a past Berlin and its inhabitants. Her work is an important document of a time marked by division, tension, and anger, but also of hope and social changes. Against the backdrop of the current global crisis, it is important to remember this chapter of German history and get inspired by the actions of those who lived it.
Addressing another fundamental topic, the compulsive exploitation of nature, is the exhibition by Marike Schuurman at Dorothee Nilsson Gallery: Kohle (Coal). The exhibition highlights the social and ecological consequences of coal mining in East Germany. The impact is evident: demolished villages, destroyed communities, physical damages, and social wounds. By documenting its places and its consequences, the artist highlights what has been lost and destroyed by human greed. This work urges us to question our relationship with nature, and advocates for changes in social and economic policies.
Anahita Sadighi tackles the troubling reality that women are currently living in Iran and Afghanistan through Woman's Land, an exhibition by artists Kiana Hayeri and Forough Alaei. Kiana Hayeri portrays the lives of Afghan women before and after the return of the Taliban. Her work is both haunting and filled with hope. These women lost their freedom, yet they retain their dignity and strength, continuing to hope for a better future.
Forough Alaei focuses on the women of Iran, documenting their powerful rebellion, which spreaded out after the assassination of Mahsa Amini in 2022. These women challenge social constraints and the taboos, resisting the adverse situation they live in and inspiring new generations to do the same.
Co-organized by the Willi Münzenberg Forum Berlin and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, HELLO ITALY by Iranian photojournalist Arez Ghaderi is on display at FMP1. Ghaderi’s photographs highlight another important theme of our time, the migration of people from various countries to Europe. The journeys that migrants have to go through are incredibly difficult and dangerous, and many people die during their crossing. Ghaderi, who has lived in refugee camps himself, tells the stories of some of these refugees, who have risked it all in their quest for a new life.
The question EMOP poses this year remains for us to answer. What stands between us? Apparently, so many things: oceans and seas, backgrounds, stereotypes, traumas, wars, politics, power, discrimination. But what these photographs reveal is also the opposite: the ability to react and stand up for solidarity, love, legacy, rebirth. What the festival hopes is that humanity can still learn from images and make good use of these lessons. Don’t miss the chance to see these compelling exhibitions, celebrate photography in Berlin this March, and see where this journey takes you.
