European Month of Photography: Berlin

By Deb A.

Germany's largest photography festival spans across Berlin and neighbouring Potsdam this year, with 100 institutions, even more exhibitions, and 500 artists taking part. The geographic scope is rivaled by the thematic sprawl of the European Month of Photography (EMOP) in Berlin: this year there is no theme.

Photographs are being shown outdoors and inside museums, galleries, cultural institutions, embassies and even municipal offices across the city, so Berliners and visitors to Germany's capital this month are likely to be able to visit a handful of exhibitions, lab tours, talks and workshops without straying too far from home.

While earlier iterations of the festival have focused on motifs such as urban, technological and political development (distURBANces, 2012), new forms of expression in photography (Mutations III, 2010), and the relationship between still and moving images (Mutations II -- Moving Still, 2008), organisers eschewed the idea of a common thread running throughout the 2016 EMOP Berlin. They did, however, highlight a few trends in submissions, including more black and white photography and a comparative lack of interest in politics and travel compared to previous years. Submissions were selected according to thematic coherence, curiosity, originality and artistic qualities.

The jury noted that the rejection of a particular theme for the  led to a more diverse event "culminating in the exploration of personality and private life and the development of personal perspectives and strong individualization." In short, it's anyone's game, as long as there's talent behind the work. And talent there is, with a line-up that includes photographers such as Berenice Abbott, Helmut Newton, Alice Springs, Polixeni Papapetrou and Gunnar Smoliansky alongside up-and-comers from Berlin's many photography schools.

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