Yellow Wall — Neukölln, Berlin

Two firewalls meet at a seam and agree on nothing. On the left, rough render stepping up over a stub of chimney, cut across the bottom by a hard diagonal shadow. On the right, a smooth plane with a thin bright edge of coping, running out of the frame. Between them, one vertical line and no transition at all.

The colour is not the buildings’. It is shifted afterwards — a decision, not a record. What the camera found was the geometry and the light crossing it; what I changed was the temperature at which you read them.

A firewall is only visible because something is missing. These two were built to be covered by neighbours that were never put back, and they have been weathering in public ever since. That is the subject, if there is one: two surfaces never meant to be seen from the street, doing the work of a façade.

Berlin-Neukölln. Part of Fremde Fassaden, an ongoing series of colour-shifted façades made in Berlin, with detours to Duisburg, Visby and Douglas. See the other works made in Kreuzberg and Neukölln.