"The work of New York based German photographer Esther Levine is attracting attention in this corpus of urban ideas and symbols. A code is a system of symbols. Symbols stand for other symbols which without communication remain phenomena unrecorded. Eshter Levine creates transient codes for Berlin's continuity in change - her work is about intensities with a foucaultish contempt for quantities and qualities." Esther Levine's photography stands in the tradition of Gary Winogrand's claim: 'I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.' An approach which synthesizes documentary and artistic ways of dealing with the technical image."

Dunja Christochowitz

from: Berlin: Towards a Candid Landscape - Ephemeral Codes in Esther Levine's Photography (printed in the catalogue "Esther Levine. Berlin - the Urban Photo Project", Edition J. J. Heckenhauer, Tuebingen/Berlin 2005. The catalogue with the complete text by Dunja Christochowitz can be purchased through the gallery).