Berlin: Portrait of a City

Berlin has survived two world wars, was divided by a wall during the Cold War, and after the fall of the wall was reunited. The city emerged as a center of European power and culture. From 1860 to the present day, this book presents the story of Berlin in photographs, portraits, and aerial views. With 560 pages of emotional, atmospheric images, from giddy pictures of the Roaring Twenties to devastating images of war to heartwarming postwar photos of a city picking up the pieces—the Reichstag in ruins and later wrapped by Christo and Jeanne-Claude—this is the most comprehensive photographic study on Berlin ever made.

Among the photographs are works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helmut Newton, René Burri, Robert Capa, Thomas Struth, and Wolfgang Tillmans as well as well-known Berlin photo-chroniclers such as Friedrich Seidenstücker, Erich Salomon, Willy Römer, and Heinrich Zille (an index of photographers' biographies is also included). Quotations from Berliners and Berlin connoisseurs such as Vladimir Nabokov, Alfred Döblin, Herwarth Walden, Marlene Dietrich, Billy Wilder, Willy Brandt, Helmut Newton, Sir Simon Rattle, and David Bowie give voices to the imagery. More than a tribute to the city and its civic, social, and photographic history, this book especially pays homage to Berlin’s inhabitants: full of hope and strength, in their faces is reflected Berlin’s undying soul.

 

Text in English, French, and German