From Kreuzberg’s center to Café Kotti, across Adalbertstraße to Rewe. Past Fotokotti, the Paloma Bar, and on to the former Meuterei. To the Admiralsbrücke and back again to Casino 36. Always surrounded by towering apartment blocks with painted balconies and messages on the façades, Manuel Lossau moved through the area during his photographic work, accompanying the people of “Kotti” in their everyday reality.

From 2021 to 2022, he photographed at Kottbusser Tor. A place that has become historically significant since the 1990s and has never lost public attention. Today, not least due to media coverage, the area is burdened with prejudice. Politics now plan a new police station at Kottbusser Tor, which is already met with resistance from society. For the photographer, the place is more than just a hotspot of crime. It is a place where people from the most diverse backgrounds meet. Today, residents, workers, entrepreneurs, tourists, struggling individuals, artists, and countless others gather here—a cross-section of society.

The work invites us to encounter the people who gather at “Kotti” on equal footing. It is about those whose lives are centered here, as well as fleeting encounters that Manuel Lossau captures in the area.

The series highlights the special within the everyday, without leaving out the destinies of the people. Unembellished and without romantic ideals, it becomes an honest contemporary document of Kottbusser Tor.

• 96 pages
• Softcover
• 48 analog images
• All images by Manuel Lossau
• Text and poem by Jan Koslowski
• Layout by WORKOUT Services & Seb Holl-Trieu
• Second edition of 150