When I stopped drinking alcohol, I also stopped going dancing. At least not in the way I was used to: drunk and until the morning! In 2018, I spent a semester in South Korea and photographed in clubs as part of the scene there. Something that is unimaginable in Berlin. To accompany my change of perspective from indoors to outdoors, from noisy to sober, I went out with an analogue Pentax 645 medium format camera, expired color films and a mobile studio and started taking portraits of the women and men at the exit of Berlin clubs on Sunday mornings. The choice of analogue technology made these encounters calmful, while the white or black background helped to focus on the personality of my models. When I approached my protagonists, I knew how they were feeling. I know the emotional state of complete exhaustion and the transitional moment from the end of a night to the new day. In my choice of motifs, I look for traces that emphasize the personality, such as a tattoo with the words ‘I‘m sorry Mom’ or a hickey on the neck from the same night.

Ronja Falkenbach (*1989, Neuwied, DE) studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and Chung-Ang University in Seoul, and graduated in 2021 with a BA in Photography & Media from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Bielefeld. Falkenbach has participated in several residencies, including those in Arles (Magnum) and at the Lausitzer Fototage. Her works have been exhibited at venues such as the Benaki Museum (Greece), the CICA Museum (South Korea), and the AFF Galerie (Berlin). Falkenbach’s work has been published in ZEIT-Campus and Musikexpress, and her series ‘Raver’ was nominated for the ‘August-Sander-Preis’. Influenced by diverse cultures and life experiences, she explores subcultures, identity issues, and social contexts.

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