“In the Crack of Time” – Street Photography by Siebrand Rehberg

Siebrand Rehberg moved to West Berlin in 1969, completed his training at the Lette-Verein from 1971 to 1973, and became a student of Michael Schmidt. As a freelance photojournalist (working for Die Zeit and Der Spiegel, among others) and later as a scientific photographer at the Technical University of Berlin, he primarily documented his own neighborhood: Kreuzberg SO 36. At the time, the district was enclosed on three sides by the Wall—a “backyard of West Berlin,” marked by war ruins, looming demolition projects, crumbling facades, and daily life right on the death strip.

Rehberg’s images do not depict grand heroes, but rather the people who shaped everyday life during that era of upheaval: children playing on demolition sites and in front of the Wall, hippies with babies in their arms, Turkish guest worker families, squatters, a packed VW bus bound for the journey home to Turkey, rows of trash cans, and forbidden border signs. With a keen sense of light, composition, and human dignity, he captures the “crack in time”—that fragile moment between division, decay, and social change.

In 2014, collector Marc Barbey wrote on the occasion of the first major presentation of the series “Signals of a New Beginning” (Collection Regard): “I have rarely seen images of Berlin from the 1970s of such quality.”

Today, more than 35 years after the fall of the Wall, these photographs take on a new, urgent relevance. While the Berlin Wall is celebrated worldwide as a symbol of overcoming division and its remaining remnants continue to attract tourists from all over the world, new walls and fences are rising elsewhere—at borders, in cities, in minds. Rehberg’s photos remind us that while physical barriers may fall, the “rift of time” persists in a different form: as a reminder of the fragility of freedom and solidarity.

The exhibition thus spans an impressive arc across five decades and highlights Rehberg as one of the most authentic street photographers of Berlin’s era of renewal.