After an exhibition in Arles this summer, the story of Studio Rex continues in Berlin! The exhibition can be seen or rediscovered from 1 June to 5 September at C/O Berlin.

Studio Rex, formerly located in the Belsunce neighborhood of Marseille, presents a photography archive offering intimate testimonials of migration to France in the 1970s and 80s.

Beyond France, numerous photo studios existed that share a similar history to Studio Rex. An adjacent exhibition space with the title Where Have All The Studios Gone? offers a look at the history and disappearance of local photo studios in Berlin using Studio Mathesie as an example. Founded in 1885 and based in Kreuzberg from 1945, the studio was forced to close its doors in 1993 due to rising rental prices. The archive was the subject of a seminal exhibition at nGbK and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in 1998. Comprising 300,000 negatives, the studio archive is now held by the municipal FHXB Museum in Kreuzberg.

C/O Berlin presents a selection of studio photographs and newspaper clippings about Studio Mathesie as well as the accompanying exhibition. They provide further insight into the practice of studio photography while also bearing witness to a lost era of Kreuzberg‘s residents and their everyday lives, as well as the changing times, fashions, and gestures. In addition, a photo studio backdrop invites visitors to photograph themselves.

Placed in dialog with the Studio Rex exhibition, this local history intervention raises larger questions about the role of photo studios in visual culture, the relevance of (self-)representation, the challenges that arise when telling such stories. And finally, the significance of the disappearance of this trade.


The exhibition produced by the Rencontres d'Arles, curated for C/O Berlin by Boaz Levin, Curator and Co-Head of Program of the C/O Berlin Foundation, and the Collector Jean-Marie Donat.