Ulrich Weichert grew up in Bonn and studied in Cologne with two renowned photograhers—Karl-Hugo Schmolz and Walde Huth—before becoming a master student of photographer Arno Jansen. He went on to study art at Cologne’s University of Applied Sciences for Art and Design before moving to Berlin permanently in 1999.
Before he moved to the city, his first trips—apart from a group trip in 1968—were in the early 1970s. “I usually came with friends in old cars or hitchhiking and stayed in a shared apartment with my brother on Zimmerstrasse, ” he says, “sleeping in a small room above the bathroom where you couldn’t even stand up. From the apartment, I could see the Springer building on one side and the death strip and a watchtower right in front of me. The existence of the Wall and everything else was so normal to me that I didn’t even take many photos of it, which is unbelievable to me now. The atmosphere around the building and its surroundings was, of course, fascinating and reminiscent of descriptions in novels and films by authors like John le Carré or Ross Thomas.”
The building Ulrich’s brother lived in was originally slated for demolition, and gradually only a few shared apartments remained. “If you arrived later than 8 p.m., the front door was locked. So you either had to arrange to meet your hosts or you could use a back entrance to the basement, access the courtyard, and from there reach the apartments. In the basement corridors, you’d encounter American GIs who had their guardhouses across the way. A camera was mounted in the bay window of the apartment, filming Friedrichstrasse looking east—I suspected it was an American camera.”
In 1973, Ulrich began photographing his “Kreuzberg 74” project, travelling to Berlin and exploring both Kreuzberg 36 and 61 on foot. He also came suring the 1980s, several times a year as far as his job allowed, and “experienced a Berlin as it was sung about by Iggy Pop or David Bowie.”
“When the Wall fell, I wasn’t able to travel to Berlin until December 1989 and January 1990,” he says. “That’s when I took the photographs around the Brandenburg Gate, the Martin Gropius Bau, Bernauer Strasse, and Prenzlauer Berg.”
After teaching photography for a while, Ulrich worked as head of the photo editing department at the Federal Government’s Press Office. Since then, he has primarily worked as an artist, shooting portraits and street scenes as well as architecture. He works almost exclusively with natural light and a small camera with a fixed prime lenses (a Leica Q and a Ricoh) to remain unobtrusive—though for portraits and architecture he uses s classic medium-format camera such as a Rolleiflex or analogue Hasselblad.
You can find more of Ulrich’s fabulous work on his website, including prints for sale soon.
Checkpoint Charlie & Zimmer Strasse, 1971-1974
Bernauer Straße, 1971-73
Mauerfall, 1989-1991
