As we near the new year we’ve asked a special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2016 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for him or her. It’s an assortment of treats for you to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for the new year to come. It’s our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ for inspiring us throughout the year.

Curator at this years Urban Art section for Berliner Liste, the first time for the traditional art fair, Guillaume Trotin is used to breaking new ground in the Street Art scene. Co-founder of Berlin’s OPEN WALLS gallery with partner Elodie Bellanger, the Frenchmen have championed innovative, edge-pushing artists such as Vermibus, OX, and Thomas Marecki aka Marok (founder of Lowdown magazine). An avid fan of urban art and photography, Guillaume tells us why he selected this image by the photographer Thomas von Wittich shot at this iconic Berlin location.

“The F Word”
Berlin, Germany
2016
Photograph by Thomas von Wittich

This photo is from the Berlin Kidz series. It shows Berlin Kids (on top on the rope) and Alaniz (on the bottom with a pole) painting over the wall that Blu covered in black.

To me this wall is the most iconic wall of Berlin, it’s been on the cover of every single edition of Kai Jakob’s Berlin Street Art book for a decade, and what happened on this wall this year summarizes the challenges we currently face in Berlin

The action took place the day after Blu recovered his large scale mural with black paint as a protest against gentrification and the monetization of street art. The property management painted everything black again the next day & this photo is the only documentation we have. It’s a piece of Berlin history.

As a side note it features some of the very few people that are still authentic in the scene (in the sense that they do large scale mural illegally and spontaneously): Berlin Kidz and Alaniz. Being a careful observer of the street art and graffiti scene in Berlin for a decade, I consider Berlin Kidz to be what’s currently the most relevant in the streets of Berlin, as well as in German graffiti as a whole.

 

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