PHOTO BOOK SUMMER

Static and mobile exhibition formats will be accompanied by events, workshops, and the concluding “Photo Book Days”—featuring book tables, lectures, and presentations by international guests.

The photo exhibition “Berlin Wonderland – Hidden Treasures” transforms the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Hall in the Stabi’s foyer into a kind of cabinet of curiosities. The traveling exhibition “Berlin Wonderland Road Show” displays large-format photographs from the photo book of the same name on five converted cargo bikes. The photo book exhibition “Fragments of the City” brings together the perspectives of various photographers, who collectively paint a multifaceted portrait of the city.

The first edition of “Photo Book Summer” is themed “Open Doors” and highlights Berlin as a city of encounters, (sub)cultures, and stories. Works by numerous photographers and publishers will be on display.

Public art installations extend the festival beyond the Stabi into the city. “Berlin Wonderland – Hidden Treasures” tells the story of the years following the fall of the Wall,

when Berlin-Mitte became a magnet for artists, visionaries, squatters, and cultural creators from all over the world. Amid crumbling facades of old buildings, a vast space of possibility emerged: clubs and bars, exhibition spaces, and galleries opened, while techno parties and performances invited people to discover the many vacant spaces in the heart of the city. The exhibition brings the Berlin of the 1990s back to life and features images from the reissued photo book “Berlin Wonderland – Wild Years Revisited 1990–1996”—supplemented by previously unseen material and newly discovered portfolios.

Featuring photos by Ben de Biel, Joe Dilworth, Philipp von Recklinghausen, Andreas Rost, Stefan Schilling, Rolf Zöllner, and a mysterious unknown woman named the first name Anna. The mobile exhibition on bicycles, “Berlin Wonderland Road Show,” tours Berlin and, when unfolded, unfolds like the solar sails of a spaceship right in the middle of the urban landscape to become a photo exhibition. It creates something astonishing—a kind of analog “before-and-after” effect, a connection between the Berlin of yesterday and today, combined with the question of future possibilities and freedoms.

Opening of “Photo Book Summer”

July 17, 2026, 7:00–9:30 p.m.

• “Berlin Wonderland – Hidden Treasures”

• “Berlin Wonderland Road Show”

• “Fragments of the City”

• Filmriss Print Swap Exhibition

“Photo Book Days”

September 11, 2026, 7:00 p.m.

Live: “Slide Music – Berlin Wonderland” Lillevan & Der Elektronaut

September 12 & 13, 2026, starting at 10 a.m.

“Thousandfold Photobook Fair”

in the lobby of the Otto Braun Hall

Lecture series and performances

in the Otto Braun Hall

September 13, 2026

“Photo Book Open House” for the

“Day in the Green” at the Kulturforum,

Kulturforum Road Show Exhibition