“Continent - In Search of Europe” is the new major book and exhibition project by OSTKREUZ - Agency of Photographers, Berlin. In the past few years, the agency members set a common topic and then worked on it for several years. After Ostlich von Eden, Deutschlandbilder, Ostzeit, Die Stadt, Über Grenzen and 25 years of OSTKREUZ, KONTINENT is the seventh joint thematic publication of the agency members who have made a name for themselves nationally and internationally for high-quality artistic-documentary photo journalism over the past three decades. In times when agencies are dying, the success of OSTKREUZ can be described as one of the rare miracles from Berlin. As an artistic and political statement, the 23 photographers and their partly highly topical series of images and different perspectives focus on the European present. In this project, the OSTKREUZ photographers explore various aspects of togetherness in Europe and take into account personal, social and political phenomena as well as fundamental structures and historical developments. They always find access to complex content via images of people and their surroundings. The themes of the various picture series range from questions of identity and security, through renationalisation, migration and integration, to a basic understanding of humanism, democracy and freedom of expression. KONTINENT would like to offer fruitful impulses for the current debate about Europe and asks, among other things: What connects us How do we live together How will our continent develop, how will the coexistence of its people? And who exactly is meant by "we" when we speak of a "we" in Europe?
The book is being published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin .