CATCHING STRANGERS – THE FAMILY CONSTELLATION PROJECT

The analog black-and-white family portraits do not treat photography as documentation, but rather as a staging, raising questions about the construction of reality and the power of human attribution.

What makes Catching Strangers unique is the close intertwining of image and language.

Twenty-three renowned authors have taken up the photographic images and inscribed fictional biographies upon them. Here, photography and literature meet as equal forms of world-making. The texts do not explain the images, but rather create their own parallel narrative worlds in which the photograph asserts something and the text contradicts it. A tension arises between photographic staging and literary imagination that goes far beyond mere illustration.

Some of the themes in the stories are quite mundane: for Mariana Leky, an author celebrated for her eloquent prose, the photo is the last one taken of a 102-year-old Japanese family man. The slightly whimsical mood we know from Leky’s novels is also present in this short, heartwarming story about the inevitable end of an old man. The Berlin novelist Ulla Lenze, on the other hand, has turned her story into a little fairy tale, a counterpoint to the insatiable Ilsebill in “The Fisherman and His Wife.” A fisherman who loves fish and a woman, but she loves only him and no fish.

On June 6, 2026, the Berlin book premiere of Catching Strangers – The Family Constellation Project will take place in the Roter Salon of the Volksbühne Berlin as part of Parole Text:Buch. The evening transforms the concept of the illustrated book into a unique stage format, eschewing a linear narrative. It approaches what we call reality—feeling its way, without a safety net. The participating authors will read their own texts that evening. For a moment, the world seems to draw closer: voices from diverse literary perspectives encounter images that defy easy categorization. Brief real-life observations and anecdotes from the process of creating the photographs and encounters with their chance protagonists allow a glimpse of the truth and authenticity of these moments to shine through. Sound opens up the spaces in between.

WHEN STRANGERS BECOME FAMILY

• Berlin Book Premiere
• June 6, 2026
• 8:00 p.m.
• Red Salon of the Volksbühne Berlin

Featuring Felicitas Hoppe, Ulrike Draesner, Mariana Leky, Nicol Ljubić, Ulla Lenze,

Anna Katharina Hahn, Verena Jütte, Marjana Gaponenko, and Christian Stahlhut.

The evening opens with a text written specifically for Catching Strangers by John Burnside, read by his longtime translator Bernhard Robben.

Sound: Matthias Millhoff

Concept and photography: Alexander von Reiswitz