Born in 1982 in Bad Hersfeld, Germany, Matthias Heiderich studied Computational linguistics and phonetics. His interest in sound extended to DJing and production and eventually a career in Acoustic Branding was forged. Music is a huge influence on Heiderich’s photography. “That’s why I also love to shoot photos for record covers. I hope I can do that more often in the future.” You can see a brilliant example which we’ve used for Seams’s “Tourist” EP.

“Berlin inspires me that much because of its many facettes. It’s a city of contrasts. Because of its unique history the cityscape is very special. In the eastern parts of the city you can find a lot of the typical Soviet architecture while the western part looks like a typical German city with its seventies architecture. Berlin was divided into four sectors for over 40 years and it became a kind of open museum of history. What’s remarkable is that there are a lot remainings of the occupation time and you can find many decayed buildings. But there’s also a lot going on at the moment, Berlin is turning into a real business city and a european metropolis. ”

“Berlin has changed a lot recently, mostly because through the process of gentrification. A lot of people move to Berlin from outside Germany because it’s relatively cheap to live here and you’re at the pulse of europe. Many artists moved here, which lead to a general change in population. For example districts like Neukölln, which always have been popular for their high percentage of immigrants, are changing quickly as more and more trendy people move there because of the low rents. Poorer people have to move away to the outskirts. Rents become higher and the areas get more attractive to investors.

You can feel that kind of change in many sectors. Many new bars, pubs and clubs open in some districts, whereas other parts of the city become more deserted. Also the number of tourists gets higher every year, which is sometimes annoying if you live here. Some clubs, like Berghain and Bar25, became very trendy and are full of tourists now. On the one hand tourism and foreign people coming to Berlin add a lot to the cultural diversity of the city, on the other one this attracts cash-hungry investors who don’t care about Berlin’s unique infrastructure which allowed many alternative projects and underground movements to build this huge cultural playground Berlin used to be in the eighties and early nineties. Now there’s not much left of it.

The images shown here form part of the Colour Berlin series. Matthias now regularly exhibits in Berlin.

Matthias Heiderich

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