A permanent film and photo exhibition has been opened in a complex of shops in Joachimsthaler Street. It brings together material that has never been shown before in such a comprehensive way. Documents, pictures and test samples are brought together here, reaching from the very beginnings of photography and film to the immediate present. They provide an almost seamless overview of a development in which we have so fully participated that we have up to now been unable to tell it apart from ourselves. Only with this collection does the unconscious life that we have been carrying in ourselves become open and stand there facing us as something strange. And in scrutinising the collection, we recognise, not without a shudder, how the present in parts sinks back into the past and how the past constantly haunts the present. 


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The exhibition rooms are reminiscent of market stalls. All the walls are plastered from top to bottom with photos, and in the gaps between them gaudy street posters stand out now and again. Further factors contribute to awakening the impression of fairground magic. Business goes on late into the night; in one of the rooms that is fitted out as one of the old suburban cinemas, forgotten and new films are shown; the shop window decoration is like a barrel organ melody made visible; the entry price has been kept so low that the open shop door does not have the effect of being an insurmountable barrier. In short, the street draws itself right into the show and its most hidden corners are still made for passers-by. Whether the improvisation that rules here is down to the intentions of the organizer or is simply thanks to the lack of means, it is in any case in perfect keeping with the subject that is to be presented. These pictures would suffocate in the bright, grand rooms of a museum not only because of their origin and their meaning but they would also be out of place in such surroundings because they have not yet become fully historical. Their place is on yesterday’s border where things can only be improvised. For in the dim light, contours are blurred for now and the murmur of lived experience echoes across into the newly deserted fields.


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The photograph of a “Window” by Niépce    comes from the very beginnings. He was active between 1816 and...