Berlin in the 1990s Was Revolutionary: Inside C/O Berlin’s Analogue Photo Retrospective

It's a deep dive into the work of German photographers who aren't necessarily household names but were there in Berlin long before the hipsters and Berghain followed: Sibylle Bergemann , Annette Hauschild, Harald Hauswald , Ute Mahler , Werner Mahler , Thomas Meyer , Jordis Antonia Schlösser, Anne Schönharting and Maurice Weiss .

There are classic images of the fall of the Berlin Wall alongside never-before-seen and unpublished photos. There are desolate street scenes of Berlin showing how broken the city was, and then there are shots of parking lot parties, Stalin statues being dismembered and young families.

Berlin really was cooler in the 1990s than it is now. Subcultures emerged, and Berlin was the core hub of European techno. The city saw a boom in graffiti and punk, squatters taking over abandoned buildings and gritty warehouses turned into nightclubs and anarchist art scenes. It's also where a group of photographers founded an agency called Ostkreuz in East Berlin, and this exhibition is a window into their lens.

Today, we hear the word Ostkreuz, and most of us think of the dark, pointed black water tower at the Ostkreuz S-Bahn station in Friedrichshain. Now a public landmark with views of the city, it is known as the "party stop" on its public transportation for its proximity to Berghain, Holzmarkt 25, Wilde Renate and About Blank. But Ostkreuz, the photo collective, has captured some of the most magical and socially astute moments of the city's post-wall history.

Ostkreuz today has twenty-five photographers, and it feels like the Magnum collective of Berlin: award-winning talents with their own photobooks, magazine editorials and solo exhibitions. Some specialize in portraits, and others travel the world capturing niche communities. One photographer on their roster was born in 1994 and shoots locals in Eastern Europe and Russia.

But let's bring it back to Berlin in the 90s. The exhibition starts with Werner Mahler's photo, from 1989. From this iconic moment, captured in black and white with Berliners standing on the wall, each photographer walks us through the city's lively culture.

There is a photo by Annette Hauschild called (1995) depicting a group of ravers wearing cut-off jeans and Doc Martens dancing on what would become a government building but was then still covered in fabric by artists Christo and Jeanne Claude . Hauschild also shot photos of 1997's Love Parade, the city's biggest dance parade that kicked off as a celebration of freedom in 1989, and photos of a 1993 protest against the city's 2000 Olympics bid at Haus K77 (a community house project) in Prenzlauer Berg.

The photos in this exhibition capture Berlin's evolution, both good and bad, at a complicated time. In 1994, Harald Hauswald took photos of developers looking at a construction site at Potsdamer Platz—an intersection that was once a no man's land but is now a bustling downtown hub. Other highlights include construction photos of Potsdamer Platz by Maurice Weiss and nightclub photos by Thomas Meyer, who captured the glory of Berlin's infamous nightclub Tresor back in 2000 on the cusp of the city's techno boom.

Looking back on the city's gory glory years—much of Berlin is now heavily gentrified—it's hard not to miss a bygone era. Some compare Berlin in the 1990s to New York in the 1970s, a wild time when artists were breaking new cultural ground. The photos in this exhibition take us back to a pre-digital era, where freedom was paramount, and superficialities were never the focus. But all is not lost. The cultural ethos that was born in the 1990s still defines Berlin. As former Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit would say, "Poor but sexy."