Berlin by Bike and Automat
Berlin by Bike and Automat – A Photographic Pilgrimage
There are cities you walk, and then there is Berlin – a place you pedal through. Riding my trusty Savanna bicycle across the flat sprawl of the Hauptstadt, I discovered that distances are not measured in kilometers here, but in the number of coffee stops and red lights you conquer.
But I wasn’t hunting for the usual suspects – not the Brandenburg Gate, not even the Fernsehturm staring at the sky like a Soviet compass needle. My compass was more modest, more analog: Berlin’s photoautomats.
Those black-and-white boxes, scattered across neighborhoods like Kreuzberg, Mitte, or Prenzlauer Berg, are time machines disguised as street furniture. You step in, pull the curtain, feed the slot, and for four small euros you are granted a vertical strip of immortality. Grainy, slightly overexposed, often skewed – but unmistakably human. In a world of infinite selfies, the photoautomat insists on limits: four frames, no retakes, no filters.
I made it my mission to ride from box to box, chaining the city into a series of mechanical portraits. Each automat stood like a relic, humming faintly, sometimes with graffiti whispering the layers of previous visitors. I photographed them not only outside but also tested them inside – becoming part of the very series I was documenting.
Cycling in Berlin means slipping from one mood to another. In Mitte, the automats lean against sleek gentrified walls, as if tolerated like eccentric uncles. In Neukölln, they bloom with stickers and spray paint, blending perfectly into the loud streets. Each stop gave me a frame of Berlin’s identity: serious, chaotic, playful, resistant to being polished.
By evening, my Savanna leaned tired against the last automat near Warschauer Straße, its spokes still ticking with the heat of the day. I spread out the freshly printed strips, each one still curling slightly, and realized the city had given me a portrait of itself – imperfect, rough, and endlessly reproducible.
Berlin doesn’t ask for your best pose. It asks for your presence.
