Es war einmal ... Berlin.

The OSTKREUZ agency was founded in the midst of the upheavals that took place in East Berlin in 1990. For Once Upon a Time. Berlin, the 90s, nine OSTKREUZ photographers worked together with curators Annette Hauschild (OSTKREUZ) and Boaz Levin (C/O Berlin Foundation) to cast a modern-day eye over their extensive archives as seen from todays perspective. As documentarists operating at the apogee of photojournalism, they tracked the changes that the city underwent. They observed the shifts in society and the challenges facing a city that had previously been divided by a wall as it grew together, capturing all this in powerful, personal images. The essays reflect this on a variety of levels: Janos Frecots examination of the changes in the urban space; Jens Balzers description of Berlins potential as a centre of creativity and culture; and Anne Rabes very personal view, as a young East German writer, of todays Berlin. OSTKREUZ is an independent, Berlin-based agency that is run by twenty-four photographers.