It started with a WhatsApp.
I'd send my friend a photo of some battered car from Berlin and caption it: "My Actual State of Mind." The joke was funny because it was true.
This project isn't about decay. It's about the peculiar dignity of things that refuse to die quietly.
Berlin is full of objects held together by improvisation, not because they lack the money for replacement, but because there's something honest about mending. A Hyundai with its rear window patched. A boot secured with rope. A bicycle seat wrapped in plastic. These aren't failures of capitalism; small acts of resistance against disposability. Pragmatic. Stubborn. Alive.
I photograph them because they tell the truth about survival in a way that polished things never can. When you tape a car window, you're not pretending it's fine. There's no vanity in it. There's only clarity. Objects clinging to existence not because of beauty, but because of sheer persistence.
That's when I recognized myself in them.
Broken.But refusing to die.