Capturing the “Ruin Porn” of Berlin
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It’s 6:45 on a Tuesday morning as Ulrike, a feisty Berliner in her early 50s whose dyed strawberry blonde hair whispers hints of gray, climbs out of her car, clutching a camera. The September fog is just lifting. Ulrike says she’d be grateful for its cover. We are about to break into an abandoned military hospital built in the 19th century on the outskirts of Berlin. As we approach the sprawling brick sanatorium, Ulrike tells me that our excursion is about more than adventurism and seductive photo opportunities. It’s about being a witness to history, to memory, to ourselves. It’s about the very visceral experience of being in a “lost place.”
We leave the car on a side street and scale a chain-link fence, alighting in a muddy field of grass, out of breath. We climb through a broken, arched window and emerge into the sanatorium’s grandiose atrium. In the empty, silent hall, I feel what Ulrike means. What was once a working hospital, swarming with nurses and doctors tending to wounded soldiers, has lain abandoned for more than 50 years—declared waste, left to wither and rot away. We are witness not just to the passing of time and gradual decay, but to the discarded dreams of a different era, represented in what remains of its opulent architecture. It
