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Stadt 5/24/A (Berlin)

Frank Thiel ( 2001/printed 2003 )

Collection item 2011.012.0003
  • Period Twenty-First Century
  • Materials Chromogenic print
  • Object Number 2011.012.0003
  • Dimensions 39 3/8 x 44 1/8 in.; 100.0125 x 112.0775 cm
  • Credit Line Gift of the Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, Washington, DC, 2011

For over ten years, Frank Thiel has been photographing the reconstruction of Berlin, the city almost totally demolished after the Second World War II air strikes. His work describes architecture in transition and the formation of a new social space within urban structures. Thiel focuses on facades, walls, windows, and ceilings, mostly photographed in abandoned industrial buildings of East Berlin. His monumental photographs record the conditions of weathered paint surfaces and destroyed buildings, translating them into abstracted architectural spaces that are emotionally charged. In its abstract painterly quality, his work explores the intimate and evolving relationship between painting and photography.

Both Stadt 5/24/A (Berlin) and Stadt 4/03 (Berlin) belong to this group of photographs that capture the facade of a Berlin’s building being dissolved into a pictorial grid of rectangular shapes and muted colors at once beautiful and painful.