Modern City Life

Modern metropolitan life is all about options. It feels like there are countless decisions and choices to be made at any given time. With the increasing number of options comes a decreasing amount of structure and clarity. Every choice is individual, every decision has the power to define who we are, making us more unique.

Nothing is simple anymore; everything is infinitely complicated. No choice is final; everything can be changed, fixed, optimized, or revoked. We call that flexibility. But an increase in flexibility brings a decrease in reliability. Nothing seems to be certain anymore. You can see this, for instance, in how commitments and plans are often changed at short notice these days. Reliability suffers, and the sense of being able to count on others fades.

When everyone is constantly choosing their own, highly individual paths, and decisions can always be changed, we lose shared rituals and reference points. This can make people feel less connected to each other and more often left to their own devices.

The Cube Berlin

The building in the photography below is the Cube Berlin, a unique office building in the heart of Berlin. It was completed and opened in 2020 and has an edge length of 42.5 meters. Its inwardly folded glass facade creates all kinds of uniquely distorted reflections and refractions which reflect modern metropolitan life’s tension between clarity and uncertainty. Everything you’d expect to see in them is there somehow, but you cannot be certain of anything. No wonder people appear to be isolated. 

Lies and illusions

Maybe all of this is the reason why today so many people gravitate towards extreme populist movements. In times when many people long for orientation and belonging, simple answers and strong leadership can seem especially appealing—even if they are often deceptive. These populist parties promise to shatter what they perceive to be broken and to replace it with an illusion of stability, security, and belonging. But it’s all lies and deception. The world they want to create is not based on freedom, but on strict rules and authoritarian domination. You can inspect what all this means in Russia, Hungary, China, and, to some extent, the USA. In these countries, you can observe how authoritarian governments restrict freedoms in the name of supposed security—often at the expense of individuality and pluralism.

Berlin Refractions

This series is part of my ongoing Urban Refractions project. Much of what was said above also applies to this project and all the subsets of photographs I created for it, including my previous Berlin Refractions blog posts.

Let’s get together

With these thoughts in mind, I invite you to click on an image to view it in an almost distraction-free lightbox, browse through these photographs, collect your own impressions, and come to your own conclusions … and share them in the comments below, so that we together can create some connection to counteract modern-day’s isolation.