Suspended time is the thematic thread that runs through an exhibition of six Berlin-based photographers on view at Urban Spree Galerie, itself a rare street adjacent respite balanced on the knife’s edge of renegade artistic autonomy and muscular steely gentrification.

Appropriate for an era when many in modern society feel unsteady and unsure of our collective direction due to shifting power centers, degraded institutions, unraveling capitalism, wars, and rumors of war, ‘Lost in Time’ presents “an eerie cartography of Berlin and beyond, encompassing emptiness, directionless pathways, time capsules, and social nature.”

Featured are photographic works by Anika Spereiter, Lena Lotte Agger, Lukas K. Stiller, Norman Behrendt, Olf, and Romeo Alaeff.

Included in the misty mix are surreal street photography nightscapes, misplaced Texan “cowboys”, a survey of the surreal emptiness in Berlin club culture when no one is there to bump and grind, wandering lonely through streets filled with strangers and ochre, emergency exits perplexingly ajar on the Ubahn, cloud-engulfed confrontations between police and protestors in the forest, and the immigrant curse of always feeling misplaced – a “haunting, cinematic, and evocative survey of Berlin as seen through the lens of an eternal outsider”

The combination of surrealism and ostracism creates a unique blend: irrational and unexpected surveys of the “normal” built city, amplified by feelings of ostracism and detachment. Together, these two elements can create a complex and thought-provoking atmosphere that challenges traditional ideas of reality and belonging. Time becomes malleable, unanchored, and suspended.

Lost in Time: A Photographic Exploration. February 24th – March 19th, 2023. Urban Spree Galerie Revaler Str. 99. Berlin.

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