Berlin (America)

In his photographic work Berlin (America), Eriz Moreno shows all 30 places in the USA with the name Berlin and takes a surprising look at the subject of the road trip. In his photographic projects, Spanish artist Eriz Moreno interweaves history and the present day, seeking to grasp the historical dimensions in landscapes shaped by humanity. Works such as Beton (Concrete), Transfăgărășan or Bratstvo / Jedinstvo visualize large-scale, built projects as symbols of national identity. To make Berlin (America), Moreno embarked on a journey to all thirty of America’s municipalities identified as “Berlin” on the map; a trip of 43 days and 21,394 kilometres across 27 states. In a sense, the American myth of the country’s settlement by immigrants from all over the world, including Germany, was founded here on the prairie. The outcome is a compendium of 600 slides, with 20 motifs from each place. Other shots from the journey as well as a road-trip video documentary complete the project, generating their own pictorial spaces and visual moments: desolate scenes with characteristic motifs and colours that seem to resemble each other in a strange and somewhat irritating manner. Berlin (America) is like a journey into the open, with no beginning and no end. The book comprises 240 photographs and includes a text by Franziska Schmidt. 240 Color photographs With a text by Franziska Schmidt Eriz Moreno, born in 1982, is a sculptor, photographer and video artist. He has received numerous prizes and scholarships for his art projects, which have been created in Armenia, Austria, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iran, Macau, Poland, Romania, Russia, Turkey, the USA and the former Yugoslav republics. Franziska Schmidt, born in 1972, is an art historian, curator and author. During her career, she has been a fellow of the “Museum Curators for Photography” programme run by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation in Essen, managing director of the Museum of Photography in Braunschweig (Brunswick), and director of Galerie Parterre in Berlin.