Swen Bernitz explores the transformation of the built environment in his conceptually grounded long-term projects, with a particular focus on Berlin and Brandenburg. His photographic practice constitutes an independent position within contemporary German photography. Architecture is not depicted as a mere object of visual aesthetics, but as a vessel of collective memory, where the layered sediment of German history becomes materially manifest.
The series are marked by analytical clarity, formal rigour, geometric precision, and a sober, documentary visual language. Deliberately devoid of people and predominantly rendered in black and white, the photographs offer a timeless view of urban structures as reflections of social and historical dynamics.
Through serial arrangement and a documentary approach, the works function as visual research, rendering visible the processes of spatial transformation. In doing so, the projects articulate a photographic discourse on the temporality of space, the persistence of built form, and its capacity to inscribe temporal traces into the fabric of the city.
In this way, the photographs become essential documents of a present shaped by the complex stratifications of past orders.