The first Martha Cooper Scholar in Photography, Dylan Mitro, has completed his residency year of study and development in Berlin. Along the way, he became more closely aligned with his identity as a documentary photographer, a storyteller, an archivist of history, and a member of the queer community. Looking back on his project of study hosted by Berliner Leben and Urban Nation Museum, he says his appreciation for social movements came into focus, as did his role as aphotographer in capturing people and preserving cultural memory.
We spent a few hours speaking with him in the rooftop space atop the Urban Nation Museum talking about his experiences over the past year and looking at the materials that he created. We took away a few lessons on culture, art, preservation, and being present.
“Before I can be a person with a camera, I have to be a person they can trust… I cannot be exploitative, especially with communities that have been exploited so much.”
Photography Isn’t Just Style; It’s Witnessing.
For Dylan Mitro, the camera has become less an instrument of aesthetics than a way of being present when history is unfolding before him. His “24 hours of protest” sequence of photos from animated and boisterous marches and demonstrations on the streets of Berlin is where this becomes clearest. He describes being in the street, whether raucous or quietly vigilant, with “thousands of people coming towards me,” running through the crowd and asking, “Can I take your photo?” as events unfolded in real time.
That sense of urgency and adrenaline is exactly what he admires in Martha Cooper’s work: her “always on” state, the way she treats the street as a field site and people as subjects rather than props. Dylan understands, as Martha does, that the most meaningful images are not staged or pretty; they are “honest and raw,” capturing people at protests, in queer nightlife, and in ordinary moments of showing up for one another. When he looks back at his protest images this year and says, “This is why I’m doing it,” he’s telling us that he recognizes that these fleeting, unposed encounters would otherwise vanish, leaving no trace in official records. Street photography through an ethnological lense, in his hands, becomes a way of witnessing courage and vulnerability in the moment and preserving it for those who come after.
“In the moment it’s so high energy, but then when you see the photos you’re like—okay, this is why I’m doing it.”
Archiving and Re-Photography are Acts of Care and Resistance.
Dylan’s unconventional project of re-photographing and reactivating historic photos begins in the archive and brings people to speak to us here, now. He related his experience of making contact with private collectors of LGBTQ+ history and organizations who have documented queer history in Berlin, sifting through collections, commercial advertising, and personal stories without quite knowing what he was looking for. Possibly because people hid their identity for protection, some things were just out of reach, and Mitro related how images “appear… in this almost ghostly, haunting way.” From our perspective, this work looks like a fresh battle against erasure.
His research led him to retrace the locations of social clubs and bookstores and to pore over a varied and deep selection of printed and digitized materials at the LGBTQIA+ archives at the Schwules Museum in Berlin, including the publication Berlin von Hinten. Thanks to the careful collecting and preservation by many in the Berlin community, the artist says he found himself faced with an overwhelming array of diverse materials to study. Mitro brought his own scanner into the reading room, mechanically capturing pages to “deal with later,” making sure nothing important slipped past him in the flood. When he began making cyanotypes from sex journals, classifieds, and Berlin bar magazines like Berlin von Hinten, he was not merely appropriating images but changing their context and use, turning fragile, easily discarded ephemera into durable goods like book pages, prints, even shirts that he wore into the public and to the opening of his exhibition.
“The beautiful thing about an archive is you don’t know what you’re looking for when you go in, and then it just appears to you in this almost ghostly, haunting way.”
Thoughtful in his description of this self-created research process, he appears fully aware of an ethical minefield that he kept seeing in the materials: the sexualization of hustlers, questions of consent, the AIDS epidemic unfolding in the background, and the way one scandalous case can be used to demonize and smear an entire community. He also remarks on how much things have changed as queer culture has learned from its own past and become more equitable and inclusive. For him, to re-photograph, to print, to bind, is to refuse both erasure and simplistic moral panic. It is an act of care for those who lived through those years and a quiet resistance to the ways queer histories are flattened, censored, or selectively remembered.
Passing the Torch: How New Artists Build on Earlier Legacies
Dylan repeatedly frames his work as a kind of “grief politics” — a way to process his own grief and “collective grief” through images and stories. While he handles materials that can be considered crass, campy, or uncomfortable, he treats them as evidence of what previous generations built so that people like him can enjoy the relative freedoms they have now. During the conversation, we recalled that on earlier Zoom calls in the year, he talked about “recognizing the work that our ancestors have done… so we can enjoy the freedoms that we have now,” and he confirmed that this became central to his mission. In practical terms, this shows up in small but telling decisions.
Looking over materials and images, he noticed that many photographs in these magazines are uncredited or minimally credited; however, it was vital for him to reconstruct a credit page in his own book from the publication’s credit lists, even when he could not match each image to a specific name. He sees this as “doing the work for the crediting now,” anticipating a future researcher who might ask “who took this?” and refusing to leave them with a dead end.
His admiration for the photographer Martha Cooper is also part of it: he recognizes that she endured periods when her work was underappreciated, then gradually became a reference point for entire scenes and was treasured for their historical significance. By aligning his practice with her documentary, ethnological approach — attentive, long-term, grounded in real communities — Mitro is situating himself in a lineage of photography that tells our stories to each other and future generations.
When Time, Space, and Support Open a Path for an Artist
Dylan Mitro arrived in Berlin after a decade in Toronto, working punishing 14–15-hour days on commercial shoots and features, a rhythm he describes as “so unsustainable.” The residency allowed him to step off that treadmill and begin a course of study in a new city on another continent. He talked about the stark contrast: in the exact moment that he got the news about being selected for the residency, he learned the news of a close family member’s illness. As he talks, you realize that the year in Berlin became a hinge between these two realities — a chance to focus on his art and a forced confrontation with “what are these next chapters of my life?”
“It’s grief politics… how do I deal with my grief that’s also collective grief? And I deal with that in all of my work.”
With a new perspective, removed from Toronto, he considers that he cannot simply “jump right back into the way I was living.” While he regroups in Ontario and supports family, you can see that the residency gave him room to experiment: scanning archives, learning cyanotype techniques, organizing negatives by place, developing a whole book, and then pivoting mid-project to the “24 hours of protest” series that ties everything together. Along the way, he learned how to structure a day when nobody is calling call time, manage the pressure to enjoy and study the city, and answer the uncomfortable question he keeps coming back to: “Why are you doing it. The support he receives — from the scholarship, the residency, and mentors — may make it possible for him to build a thoughtful, ethically grounded body of work that he could not have assembled in the gaps between commercial gigs.
Regarding his project, the cultural ground keeps shifting, and Mitro couldn’t have been more timely. In a political climate in the Western world where there is a backtracking on human rights and queer and trans lives are attacked and simplified, this kind of photography and archiving says: we were here, we are complex, and our images won’t disappear.
Throughout the conversation, Dylan connects his work directly to the present rise of fascism and reactionary politics. He notes that people now often say, “You can be queer anywhere in the city,” as if dedicated spaces and organizing structures were no longer necessary. He counters this by pointing back to history: earlier generations had to fight for those spaces and used them to manage when “the world kind of feels so helpless.” At the same time, he sees how quickly media and political actors can weaponize isolated events — a murder, a scandal, a stereotype — to brand entire communities as dangerous, from gay men in the 1990s to immigrants and trans people today.
That’s precisely why he went to the archive, sat with the original materials, and made new work grounded in lived experience rather than sensational headlines. His insistence on consent and trust in photographing protests, especially when working with trans folks, is part of the same refusal to flatten people into symbols. He’s acutely aware that much of the public visual language around queerness is still dominated by highly sexualized images, corporate Pride floats, and what he and the sponsors describe as “rainbow capitalism.”
By pairing reactivated archival images with new, candid protest photographs, Mitro constructs a more layered record: people organizing and dancing, grieving and celebrating, dressing up and just existing. In the shadow of book bans, anti-trans legislation, and cultural backlash, his project quietly insists that queer and trans lives are not a recent “trend” or a single issue to be voted up or down. They are entire worlds, spanning decades, and his camera — like Martha Cooper’s — is there to make sure those worlds are seen and remembered.
“I know I’m not going back to the life that I had before… I’m really reshaping how things are gonna be moving forward.”
Click HERE to read our first interview with Dylan, where he speaks in depth about their project Inhereted Thread for their Fresh A.I.R. Residency and the Martha Cooper Scholar for Photography 2025.
Berlin has always been a city that remembers through reinvention—a fitting place for the first recipient of a photography scholarship named in honor of a pioneering ethnographer whose seventy-year career preserved worlds in flux. The recipient of the first Martha Cooper Scholarship for Photography, the Canadian photographer and researcher Dylan Mitro, has spent recent months in the city exploring its queer memory through Inherited Thread, a project that draws together archival study, re-photography, and contemporary documentation. Their work, soon to be exhibited in Berlin, revisits Schöneberg’s queer nightlife ecology from the 1980s onward, asking how we inherit histories that were often hidden, erased, or displaced—and how we might keep them alive through art and documentation.
Inherited Thread takes as its starting point Berlin von Hinten, a gay tourism atlas first published in 1981 that catalogued Berlin’s bars, bookstores, and venues at a time when queer life existed largely in coded networks. From this modest guidebook, Dylan reconstructs a cultural topography: visiting surviving sites, mapping closed ones, and photographing their present forms. Their fieldwork extends into the archives of the Schwules Museum and Spinnboden, where they piece together ephemera—ads, zines, snapshots, and personal notes—that once charted a thriving but precarious social world. Each recovered address becomes a point of dialogue between past and present, what was lived, and what remains.
Materially, the project echoes themes of loss and persistence. Cyanotype quilts made from archival interiors fade from clarity to a certain ghostliness; resin-encased photos hold light like memory suspended, and weatherproof plaques marking the sites of vanished community. These gestures of preservation aren’t presented as nostalgia; they propose to keep history embodied and visible. Mitros’s own approach to documentation asserts that the everyday places where people gathered, danced, and organized are as vital to collective memory as any monument.
As Dylan prepares for their Berlin exhibition in November, Inherited Thread unfolds as a living, site-specific memory atlas of queer life—stitched from archival guides, re-photographed spaces, and the testimony of those who remember. It reflects a city still negotiating its relationship to memory, visibility, and belonging. And like the scholarship’s namesake, whose life’s work has championed careful observation, human imagination, and dignity, Dylan’s practice reminds us that documentation, when done with empathy and rigor, is itself an act of care.
“Inherited Thread attempts to better understand our Queer histories through archival ephemera. Dylan has conducted research in the LGBTQIA+ archives of the Schwules Museum. Focussed on the historic publication Berlin Von Hinten, a Gay tourism atlas first published in 1981, showcasing nightlife and community spaces that defined Berlin in the 1980s and 1990s. Revisiting and mapping forgotten landscapes through printmaking and photography, this project seeks to explore the inheritance of historical LGBTQIA+ spaces, and how to keep their stories alive.”
Following is our interview with the artist, researcher, and photographer.
I. Artistic Practice and Methodology
Brooklyn Street Art:For the exhibition for the Fresh A.I.R. you are using cyanotype printing on cotton-rag paper and making a quilt with some of them, positioning photography within a tactile, craft-based framework. Could you elaborate on how this interplay of image and textile informs the conceptual and affective dimensions of the project?
Dylan Mitro: My concept for this work involved printing cyanotypes on cotton rag paper and quilting them together, sourcing the material from a 1980’s and 1990’s Gay Tourist Publication titled ‘Berlin Von Hinten’ by Bruno Gmünder. This journey of research has been such a vast exploration of Berlin’s history, I felt I was having to sew together the LGBTQIA+ history that I was learning, as an attempt to retell stories of the community here in Berlin. Through the cyanotype sun printing process, the images were printed one print at a time, so it was unpredictable how they would turn out. Once I had 100s of these prints finished, it was clear that some turned out more visible than others with ghost-like qualities. This process felt very metaphorical to our LGBTQIA+ history and how a lot of these people, places and stories had been lost to time.
I decided to compose the cyanotypes like a quilt with both the photographs, advertisements and maps of Berlin’s; Gay, Lesbian Bars, Cafes, Discos, Travesti clubs, and sex shops. It felt like I was sewing back together a mere echo of these places and their stories from Berlin in the 1980s and 1990s. These two decades of the 1980s and 1990s are so poignant in the community, connected to the AIDS epidemic. As a Queer artist I try to navigate and understand further how to measure the loss the community faced in this time. With my body of work titled ‘Inherited Thread’ to both refer physically to the ways I have quilted together the cyanotype prints, but also to refer to the process this research has taken me on, in threading together the question of how, we as the next generation of the LGBTQIA+ community inherit the stories and spaces of those that came before us.
BSA: You will be drawing extensively on archival materials from Berlin Von Hinten (1981–1997). How do you approach the ethical and aesthetic considerations of working with such archives—particularly when recontextualizing them within a contemporary queer landscape?
DM: I think when dealing with any LGBTQIA+ historical material, you have to understand how personal perspective affects your lens, as the landscape within the community has changed. There was much to consider when dealing with a body of work like the ‘Berlin Von Hinten’. First, this book was mainly made for ‘Gay’ male tourists, looking to explore the homosexual life of Berlin, but was not limited to just that perspective. It shared both Trans and Lesbian spaces in its publication as well. But when dealing with the ethics of the ‘Berlin Von Hinten’ publication itself, it is necessary to acknowledge that it was made from and for a masculine, predominantly white gay male clientele.
So I had to acknowledge that, though this was a rich part of Berlin’s LGBTQIA+ history, it was certainly a limited perspective and not the full picture of the scene. Looking at any ‘Gay’ history, you have to acknowledge how prejudice and exclusionary rhetoric within the scene was certainly present and still exists in the present. I was approaching these books as a Gender Queer artist who is also a tourist trying to discover Berlin but from a contemporary lens. Approaching the research and acknowledging the influence this publication had within the Gay community is important. This work has not been intended to criticize the publication but to celebrate the way it was able to so intimately time capsule part of the 1980s and 1990s Gay scene here in Berlin through its writing, mapping and photography.
A majority of the aesthetics I was interested in were the advertisements in the publication. A lot of the focus is catered to the homoerotic, macho, masculinity. This aesthetic is not what I personally prescribe to. Still, I find the use of this homoerotic aesthetic to market sexually charged spaces for Gay tourism at a time within the peak of the AIDS epidemic very interesting. So all of this was considered as I worked through these published books.
BSA: You will be creating/presenting many of these historical photos and places re-photographed. What is the protocol for doing this?
DM: I could not have started any of this research without the support and access to the wonderful Schwules Museum Library and archive. I owe a lot of this research to their continued support. My protocol to present these historical photos was to take high-quality scans of these pages within the Berlin Von Hinten. These pages included photos of rare glimpses into the interiors of LGBTQ+ spaces in Berlin in the 1980s and 1990s. I recorded all of the accreditation of photographers that were published within the book and reprinted them within my research. As I was researching, I wasn’t only collecting photographs of these establishments but also their advertised addresses.
After the scans were finished, I created my own photo negatives on transparent acetate paper of the historical images. These photo negatives were made to print cyanotype copies of the images. After I digitally documented the addresses of these spaces into a Google Maps folder to create a digital map of where these places existed. From there, I was able to understand which of these places were still open and operating as the same business 40 years later. From the 200 businesses I documented, only 12 were still open; operating under the same name. So as a part of the project I visited some of those establishments and worked to photograph them the way they were in the original book 40 years later.
BSA:When you revisit surviving venues to echo the 1980s interior shots, how do you determine vantage point, focal length, framing, and lighting to balance fidelity to the historical images with your own authorial choices? What does re-photographing do in reference to history?
DM: I approached the photographs more organically, trying to document these spaces in a way that would allow for the environment’s ambience to speak for itself and for it to be understood within the photographs. I wanted to think if these photos were to be viewed in 40 years from now, how could these be a documentation of the spaces themselves, like the photos from the Berlin Von Hinten. I made sure to photograph the rooms without any customers in them, as the photos were more about the environment. I am attempting to continue the documentation and archive these current spaces as they are now, before they are lost to time. So it does feel like I am continuing the narrative of archiving to prevent the story of these places from being lost.
BSA: Provenance, description, and preservation must be a challenging process: What is your workflow for recording provenance and metadata (dates, addresses, names/roles, consent, cross-references to Berlin von Hinten) and for long-term preservation (file naming, etc)?
DM: My attempt at cataloging my findings and recording the metadata of researching was for a more artistic storytelling approach. To organize each of the places I had researched with its photograph, advertisements, and descriptions on each page. Recording when these places were established and which ones still exist. There are pages I have dedicated to crediting the authorship of these previous Berlin Von Hinten publications.
In the conversation around long-term preservation, I would consider my approach to be more artistic than technical. I still have to remind myself that this work is from the lens of an artistic practice over the short course of 10 months, and with that I feel it is still a work in progress with the intention of creating dialogue involving an open-ended question: how do we approach the idea of Inheritance of history within our LGBTQIA+ communities? – the answer is one that we each have to seek out and learn for ourselves. I have been working in LGBTQIA+ archives for years now, and it’s overwhelming how much material there is within the archives to be rediscovered. I hope others are inspired to dive into it.
II. Community, Space, and Memory
BSA:Central to the project are spaces such as Pussy Cat Bar and Eisenherz Book store, both historically significant to Berlin’s queer community. Can you talk about navigating the process of documenting these living spaces in a manner that both honors their historical legacies and engages with their present realities?
DM: The spaces I have photographed and interviewed were documented with very different approaches based on their history and contemporary positioning. Pussy Cat has been around since 1974, founded by two lesbians, and has always had its doors open to all, being very inclusive. When I photographed their space, I wanted to capture the ambience. The bar’s essence owes much to Daniela, Pussycat’s owner from 1998 until her death in November 2020; she’d worked there since 1982. Her former sidekick “Donna” (an employee since ’85) now runs the show, preserving Daniela’s legacy. I included portraits of the owner Donna and Jan, a young bartender who has been working there for just a few years. I spoke to Donna about the history of the bar, hearing stories about its legacy. While with Jan, I spoke about what it means for the next generation to be coming to a spot like Pussy Cat. I asked about the current climate, of the importance of a bar like Pussy Cat, and how it fosters intergenerational connections.
For Eisenherz Bookstore, it had a huge significance to Queer history here in Berlin. It is the longest-standing LGBTQIA+ bookstore in all of Europe. It opened in 1978, as a Gay bookstore called Prinz Eisenherz located at Bülowstraße 1, just down the street from my studio here at Fresh A.I.R. and across the street from where this project will be exhibited. Eisenherz is where the story of my research starts, as the founders of Berlin Von Hinten – Bruno Gmünder and Christian Von Maltzahn were two of the five founders of the Prinz Eisenherz bookstore.
When I photographed and interviewed the current owners of the Eisenherz, Roland Müller-Flashar and Franz Brandmeier, they talked about their involvement in the business since the 1980s. We spoke about how they changed the name and made the bookstore more inclusive over the years. They still to this day host book readings and gallery openings. As a business, I talked to them about their legacy and how vital their store is to the community. They shared with me photographs of the official opening in 1978 to contribute to the publication of the work. I photographed portraits of the owners and their colleagues to create a current time capsule of their store and the ones who keep it running. In a climate of LGBTQIA+ book bannings, it’s a significant social fabric for the community to access history and current local and international voices.
BSA:When you engage with events such as the Community Dyke March and Christopher Street Day, your work intersects with both activist and celebratory dimensions of queer visibility. How did your immersive engagement with these communities inform your visual and conceptual strategy or the outcome?
DM: I intend to document Queer history as a celebration. However, I cannot ignore that Pride is also a protest. I felt compelled to capture the ongoing struggles the community still faces and the freedoms we must continue to fight for. While in residence, there was Berlin Pride in July, and within 24 hours, there were three marches that I wanted to document. There was the Community Dyke March, the Christopher Street Day March, and the International Queer Pride for Liberation March. I think it is powerful to show those who show up in the streets, and to document their power.
Activism and celebration are not binary, and to celebrate the strength of their ability to show up in the streets and fight for rights and freedoms is important. I think it is essential to acknowledge how easy it is for us to forget the sacrifices that have given us our freedoms today. We are here today with the rights and freedoms we have because of the elders who came before us, and the activism in the streets they did. There is still so far to go, and I think it’s important to document and archive the ongoing fight for future generations to witness the brave trailblazers of today.
BSA:You’re pairing your visual works with interviews and a book, integrating oral histories with photographic documentation. What are the narratives and/or perspectives you’re most focused on to share with the public?
DM: I will have a book that will document the whole journey of my research and where it leads. This includes how many of these LGBTQIA+ spaces are on the verge of disappearing as the community shifts. I look to ask the community what it means to inherit these histories. How is the torch passed on and how can we find more intergenerational connections, threading a link to the past and finding more of a moral responsibility to them instead of just approaching them from the position as a consumer.
BSA:The inclusion of archival artifacts—such as pieces of the original mural wall outside Connection club and printed publications like Berlin Von Hinten—places in the foreground a dialogue between image, object, and place. How do these material elements shape the way people can react to your work?
DM: For the project to include archival artifacts like the Berlin Von Hinten publication and pieces of the exterior mural from Connection Club, I want to bring attention to the value and importance of these objects visually. For the Connection Club mural, it was unexpectedly demolished as I was in my residency, and I actively became a part of the project unexpectedly. The mural on the exterior of Connection Club was a large display of Gogo dancers and Drag Queens painted in 1997. The entire mural was coming down without any means of preserving it. I believe this was probably the Largest and oldest gay mural in the Schonenberg neighbourhood, and there was no relative concern about attempting to preserve it. So I decided to photograph and document the demolition and went into the dumpster of rubble to collect some of the broken pieces of the mural to exhibit as a part of the exhibition. It was an unexpected moment in the project that encapsulated the work into a physical object. We aren’t just losing the spaces for the community; we are also losing the artworks on their walls and the stories they tell. So having it in the exhibition allows the viewer to witness the continued deterioration of Queer spaces and the current climate.
BSA: Berlin’s queer history is both deeply entrenched and dynamically evolving. How do you situate your work within this broader historical continuum, and what conversations do you hope it sparks within institutional and public contexts?
DM: Berlin’s Queer history is so deep, it is why I was first drawn to this city. But I think once I arrived and started my research, I was so overwhelmed by how vast that history was. I didn’t know where to start or how to encapsulate it into a project. But I think once I familiarize myself with the context of how I am approaching Berlin, I can ask questions in my work without trying to answer them. I wanted to hopefully have people ask their own questions of how do we inherit our Queer histories, how do we memorialize not just the grief we endured, but to memorialize it.
To familiarize ourselves with how our community has come together throughout history to fight for the freedoms that can so easily be taken away—and are actively being taken away now. At a time when the digital age is isolating us further from each other, I hope this work encourages the public to find importance in our histories and actively engage with it. I wanted people to visit and support these places that are still around and respect their deep historical roots. I wanted to find the threads that link what we enjoy and consume today within the community because of what came before us. Hopefully more people will be inclined to go to places like Pussy Cat, Eisenherz bookstore, or the Schwules Museum Library Archive to find stories they are interested in finding out more about.
BSA:Did you find it difficult for the subjects you were pursuing to engage with you and to open up more with their stories and legacy? What are the challenges for an artist and researcher like you when asking people to be frank and open with you about their stories?
DM: From the beginning, I knew as an English-speaking outsider from Canada, I had to accept that I was approaching this project from that perspective. I did have some apprehensions at the beginning about approaching people to ask more about the history because I wanted to make sure I had enough knowledge of the history to ask the right questions. But I tried my best to immerse myself in the community to understand and feel what type of climate it truly is. Thankfully, the residence was located right in the heart of the historic Gay district of Schöneberg. From leather cruising bars to the Gay cafes, I visited them all, and within the context of being an outsider trying to learn more about the history of these places, I had to be patient.
As a Documentary film director, I have done many interviews in my life, so I am familiar with talking with strangers, but it was essential to gain trust with them. I do think that because I don’t speak German there was certainly a barrier to get through to get the most intimate version of the stories but there was a ‘matter of fact’ approach that most people I talked to gave. I noticed that each of the people I interviewed had a very clear understanding of ‘How things are now’. The community relies heavily on tourism, so its clientele has a transient mentality. I could really get a sense from each of them that it’s still a lot of work to keep up running a business and it’s not easy.
So for me to come in to ask questions and take up their time, I needed to be patient and work with them on their terms. Some places were more difficult than others, getting myself into some interesting situations, as some were quite closed off. In those moments, I had to respect their choices and pivot just to accept that there are countless other stories to focus on. For those who were open and invited me into their world to listen to their stories, I am eternally grateful. I hope that more Queers my age understand their responsibility to the community and become more interested in LGBTQIA+ history. It’s our obligation as the next generation to not only be consumers of the culture but to become active participants within the framework in an effort to keep these LGBTQIA+ spaces and stories alive.
Dylan is an alumnus of Class #10 of Fresh A.I.R. The project is an artist-in-residence program of the Berliner Leben Foundation. Dylan is the first recipient of the Martha Cooper Scholarship for Photography under Fresh A.I.R. They will be exhibiting their project at the Fresh A.I.R. exhibition opening on November 7th.
Fresh A.I.R. Scholarship Exhibition #10
“I AM FLUX: The Freedom of Being and the Possibilities of Becoming”
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 6, 2025, 7–10 PM Exhibition Dates: November 7, 2025 – March 29, 2026 Opening Hours: Tuesday/Wednesday: 10 AM – 6 PM Thursday to Sunday: 12 PM – 8 PM Location: Project Space of the URBAN NATION Museum, Bülowstraße 97, 10783 Berlin
Open House: Saturday, November 8, 2025, 2–8 PM, Bülowstraße 7, 10783 Berlin
For more information about Fresh A.I.R. click HERE
For more LGBTQIA+ related projects under the Fresh A.I.R. Program click the links below:
Berlin brings one of its unsung heroes to a wall this month as part of an Urban Nation mural program. On October 9, 2025, UN inaugurated “Akkord,” the newest addition to its long-running One Wall program—a series built on the premise that it is possible a single wall can carry a powerful message in a community. Created by the Berlin-based collective Innerfields, this mural rises above Schwambzeile 7 in Charlottenburg-Nord, transforming an ordinary apartment façade into a site of memory, artistry, and civic reflection. Following the One Wall charge, it’s meant to be public art with purpose: direct, accessible, and impossible to ignore.
Innerfields, who have operated at various times as a trio and a duo since forming in 1998, are well known in Berlin’s street art community for their blend of figurative realism and symbolic abstraction. Emerging from the city’s graffiti culture, they often explore the interplay between humanity, technology, and nature—our coexistence and our contradictions. Their murals are recognizable for their human subjects rendered with near-classical precision, often set against conceptual frameworks that invite reflection rather than spectacle.
For Akkord, the artists turned their focus to Maria Terwiel, a member of the German resistance executed by the Nazis in 1943 for distributing anti-regime leaflets. The mural’s imagery—Terwiel playing an accordion whose keys morph into those of a typewriter, with the sheet music transforming into the very leaflets she once duplicated—captures the merging of art, intellect, and defiance. The work’s title plays on the dual meaning of “chord” and “accord”: harmony in music, and solidarity in human endeavor.
The concept and design was developed through a workshop with students from the Anna-Freud-Schule and Akkord intends to be as much a pedagogical project as a memorial. It engages young Berliners in reclaiming a silenced voice – and translating history into visual language. In a city that wears its past in layers of paint, Innerfields’ wall may remind us that resistance can take many forms—and that in the right hands, even an accordion can be an instrument of liberty.
GO TO URBAN NATION BERLIN TO READ MORE ABOUT “AKKORD”, INNERFIELDS, AND THE ONE WALL PROJECT
Shoe IS MY MIDDLE NAME. Niels Show Meulman 2016. (photo courtesy of MCL)
Reprinted from the original review by BSA for the Martha Cooper Library.
Graffiti writer, calligrapher, painter, typographer—Meulman’s professional identities have long orbited the written mark. “Shoe Is My Middle Name” gathers those decades-deep orbits into one gravitational field, presenting a mid-career survey whose scale and heft match the artist’s sweeping gestures. Photographs of murals, canvases, and poetry scrolls are sequenced chronologically yet feel rhythmic, echoing the repetitive muscle memory that turns letters into pictures.
The early chapters recall a precocious Amsterdam teen who imported New YorkWild-Style back to Europe after meeting Dondi White, while later spreads document how that fluency in urban letterforms morphed into what critics dubbed “calligraffiti.” Ink splashes, broom-wide strokes, and squeegee drags demonstrate Meulman’s commitment to an all-in mark: once pigment meets surface, there are, as he writes, “no half steps.” Quotes, diary fragments, and the full-page poem “A Writer’s Song” punctuate the visuals, anchoring grand abstractions in an autobiographical voice both swaggering and reflective.
Shoe IS MY MIDDLE NAME. Niels Show Meulman 2016. (photo courtesy of MCL)Shoe IS MY MIDDLE NAME. Niels Show Meulman 2016. (photo courtesy of MCL)
Title: Shoe IS MY MIDDLE NAME Published: Lebowski Publishers / Overamstel. Amsterdam, 2016. Author: Niels Shoe Meulman Language: English
BSA Special Edition LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY at Urban Nation Museum Newly released Interview snippet with curator Michelle Houston and Steven P. Harrington
The LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY exhibition at Berlin’s Urban Nation Museum continues to evolve, provoke, and inspire—inviting new eyes and fresh conversations nearly a year since its debut. Curated by Michelle Houston, the show features over 50 artists from Berlin and around the globe, each offering their own “letter” to the city in the form of street art, sculpture, video, photography, and installation.
In this short video, BSA’s Steven P. Harrington sits down with Houston to revisit the themes driving the exhibition—urban transformation, inequality, climate crisis, and the radical hope that public art can awaken something deeper in our cities. Together, they explore the continued resonance of works by icons like Banksy, Lady Pink, Shepard Fairey, and Vhils, alongside emerging voices and Berlin-based practitioners such as Rocco and His Brothers, Susanna Jerger, and Jazoo Yang.
With the show remaining open for at least another year, this is your reminder: don’t miss the chance to experience a rare international dialogue unfolding inside—and outside—the walls of the museum. It’s not just a show. It’s an ongoing conversation between artists and the city.
Liz Munsell, Greg Tate (ed.): Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation
Reprinted from the original review.
The catalogue Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation, accompanying the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston exhibition, is as multifaceted and dynamic as its subject. Edited by Liz Munsell and Greg Tate, this robust volume unravels the layers of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s artistic world and his role within a transformative cultural era. It positions Basquiat not just as an individual artist but as a pivotal figure in a constellation of intersecting movements reshaping art, music, and performance in 1970s and 1980s New York City.
The book is as much a cultural chronicle as it is an artistic study. It captures the chaotic, electrifying energy of a New York where the boundaries between “high” and “low” art dissolved, and the street became an unregulated gallery. The text delves into the social and cultural exchanges between the Uptown and Downtown scenes—worlds simultaneously divided and united by race, class, and artistic vision. These layers are vividly brought to life through essays that explore the societal forces shaping Basquiat’s era: the collapse of urban economies, the rise of hip-hop, and the cultural syncretism that defined the city’s creative spaces.
MARTHA COOPER LIBRARY: BOOK RECOMMENDATION
? | Title: Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation ? | Publisher: MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (May 5, 2020) ? | Authors: Liz Munsell, Greg Tate (ed.) With contributions by J. Faith Almiron, Dakota DeVos, Hua Hsu, and Carlo McCormick ? | Language: English
Bordalo II 2011 – 2017 is an essential document of the Lisbon-based artist’s transformative approach to street art, sculpture, and environmental activism. Published in conjunction with his massive solo exhibition ATTERO in Lisbon, the book chronicles six years of Bordalo II’s relentless exploration of waste as both material and message. Known for his large-scale animal sculptures crafted from discarded objects, Bordalo II turns industrial, commercial, and consumer debris into expressive works that challenge the culture of overconsumption.
In ATTERO, his creative process is laid bare—viewers enter a warehouse where bicycles stack in layers, office chairs wave their legs in the air, and white garbage bags form soft, meringue-like piles. As an immersive study, the book mirrors the artist’s ability to organize chaos into order, crafting a visual language of urgency, beauty, and critique.
MARTHA COOPER LIBRARY: BOOK RECOMMENDATION
? | Title: Bordalo II 2011 – 2017 ? | Published on the occasion of Bordalo II’s ATTERO Exhibition in Lisbon in 11 / 2017. Hard cover. ? | Author: Bordalo II ? | Language: English
First day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and what better sign of renewal than a fresh Urban Nation bloom—sprouting defiantly among the dried leaves, cigarette butts, and abandoned Berliner Pilsner bottles?
As part of an ongoing conversation with curator Michelle Houston about the latest show at Urban Nation, LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY, we find ourselves drawn to the echoes of the Situationists, those restless wanderers who believed the city wasn’t just a place but an experience—one that tugs at your emotions, plays with your psychology, and sometimes leads you straight to an impromptu picnic on Görlitzer Park’s slightly suspect grass.
The show isn’t just a tribute to urban spaces; it’s a love note, a protest, and a collection of insights into the streets that shape us and our experience.
Video credits: Commissioned by Stiftung Berliner Leben. Shot by Alexander Lichtner & Ilja Braun. Post-production, additional footage, graphics, and a final version by Michelle Nimpsch for YAP Studio/YES, AND… productions GmbH & Co. KG
Books in the MCL: Jessica Nydia Pabón-Colón. Graffitti Grrlz: Performing Feminism in the Hip Hop Diaspora
Reprinted from the original review.
“Graffiti Grrlz: Performing Feminism in the Hip Hop Diaspora” by Jessica Nydia Pabón-Colón provides an insightful look into the world of women graffiti artists, challenging the perception that graffiti is a male-dominated subculture. This book highlights the contributions of over 100 women graffiti artists from 23 countries, showcasing how they navigate, challenge, and redefine the graffiti landscape.
From the streets of New York to the alleys of São Paulo, Pabón-Colón explores the lives and works of these women, presenting graffiti as a space for the performance of feminism. The book examines how these artists build communities, reshape the traditionally masculine spaces of hip hop, and create networks that lead to the formation of all-girl graffiti crews and painting sessions. This aspect is particularly useful in understanding how digital platforms have broadened the reach and impact of women graffiti artists, facilitating connections and collaborations worldwide.
MARTHA COOPER LIBRARY: BOOK RECOMMENDATION
? | Title: Graffitti Grrlz: Performing Feminism in the Hip Hop Diaspora ? | NYU Press. June 2018. Softcover. ? | Author: Jessica Nydia Pabón-Colón ? | Language: English
We are thrilled to once again announce the Martha Cooper Scholarship, in partnership with Urban Nation. This scholarship offers a promising photographer the chance to spend 10 months in Berlin in 2026—fully supported and immersed in the city’s dynamic creative environment.
This extraordinary opportunity provides not only free accommodation in an artist residence and full coverage of travel and living expenses but also regular mentorship, collaboration with artists across disciplines, and participation in Urban Nation’s projects and partnerships.
Now in its second year, this scholarship continues to celebrate the vision and legacy of Martha Cooper, who remains an integral part of the selection committee. Berlin is a global epicenter of urban contemporary art, where history, rebellion, and creative experimentation collide. Its streets are an open-air gallery, layered with decades of graffiti, murals, and artistic interventions that reflect the city’s ever-evolving identity. A magnet for artists, Berlin fosters a culture of artistic freedom, collaboration, and innovation, making it one of the most dynamic places for street art, photography, and contemporary expression. As the first recipient fo the Martha Cooper Scholarship embarks on their journey in Berlin right now, we are eager to welcome the next photographer ready to explore and capture the spirit of Berlin.
Applications for 2026 are now open—we look forward to seeing your work!
Read an excerpt from the official Call below:
The Martha Cooper Scholarship (MCS) offers a unique opportunity for an individual from Africa or Latin America to dedicate themselves for eleven months to an artistic project through the medium of photography. With the newly announced MCS, the Foundation Berliner Leben acknowledges the importance of documentary photography and purposefully offers a production scholarship for documentary photographers with an ethnographic focus to apply for this scholarship, seeking projects that critically and thoughtfully engage with the places, communities, and social realities they document. Prioritizing work that captures the context between people and their environments, we support projects that reflect everyday life, shifting cultural landscapes, and the ways communities adapt and change. The scholarship encourages applications from photographers whose work offers fresh, honest perspectives on lived experience, community, and identity with depth and optimism. The scholarship is based on the annual topic of Fresh A.I.R., the scholarship programme of Stiftung Berliner Leben. It addresses social and political developments that affect us in the present and highlights the diversity of human experience and perception of the world.
The scholarship is based on the annual topic of Fresh A.I.R., the scholarship programme of Stiftung Berliner Leben, which addresses social and political developments that affect us in the present, and highlights the diversity of human experience and perception of the world.
The chosen photographer will be invited to live and work in one of our Fresh A.I.R. residencies in Berlin Schöneberg.
The current call is for the 11th class starting in February 2026 and ending in November 2026.
Application for a scholarship in 2026
Application deadline: Sunday,16th March, 2025
Applications are only accepted via Email: FreshAIR-office@stiftung-berliner-leben.de
For a successful application please hand in the following documents:
• Curriculum vitae
• Project outline/description
• Budget plan
FOR MORE DETAILS, HOW TO APPLY AND IMPORTANT INFORMATION CLICK HERE
Books in the MCL: Johan Kugelberg (ed.). Born in the Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop.
Born in the Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop. Johan Kugelberg (Hrsg). Expanded edition 2023
Reprinted from the original review.
“Born in the Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop” is an in-depth exploration of hip-hop’s roots in the Bronx during the 1970s and early 1980s. Edited by Johan Kugelberg, this hardcover serves as a historical archive and a tribute to the pioneers who transformed a local movement into a global cultural phenomenon.
The book’s heart lies in the photography of Joe Conzo, known as “the man who took hip-hop’s baby pictures.” His candid images vividly capture the scene’s raw energy—block parties, breakers (break dancers), and iconic figures like Grandmaster Flash, the Cold Crush Brothers, and Afrika Bambaataa. Conzo’s photos spotlight the performers and document the surrounding community and atmosphere, reflecting the creativity and resilience that defined hip-hop’s grassroots beginnings. His work reveals a culture inventing itself amidst the social and economic challenges of the Bronx.
MARTHA COOPER LIBRARY: BOOK RECOMMENDATION
? | Title: Born in the Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop ? | 1xRUN. August 2023. Hardcover. ? | Author: Johan Kugelberg ? | Language: English
The Wide World of Graffiti by Alan Ket is a comprehensive exploration of graffiti art, tracing its evolution from a marginalized expression to a globally recognized art form. The book delves into the origins of graffiti in the late 1960s and 1970s, primarily in Philadelphia and New York City, where it began as a voice for youth who felt excluded from mainstream society. Ket, a graffiti writer and co-founder of the Museum of Graffiti in Miami, provides an informed perspective, blending personal experience with scholarly insight.
The narrative chronicles the development of graffiti, emphasizing its grassroots beginnings and connections with other subcultures such as skateboarding, hip-hop, and tattooing. This holistic approach provides a broad understanding of the cultural milieu that nurtured graffiti’s growth. Ket documents how graffiti evolved over decades from simple tags to complex murals, reflecting the changing social and political landscapes. The book offers a detailed account of various styles and techniques, highlighting how graffiti artists and street artists have pushed the boundaries of traditional art forms.
MARTHA COOPER LIBRARY: BOOK RECOMMENDATION
? | Title: The Wide World of Graffiti ? | The Monacelly Press. December 2023. Hardcover. ? | Author: Alan Ket ? | Language: English
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
