Ich bin Berliner
2022

This lettering on books that I found around Berlin I realised as a part of my Fresh A.I.R. residency final exhibition in the Spring of 2022. First I spray painted the books gold and then did the lettering in black.

On the book spines I hand-lettered the phrase “Ich bin Berliner” (I am a Berliner), which evokes many associations. The German Blackletter style is a reference to the one used in public places around Berlin, for example on several signs on Berlin's S-Bahn. The national typographical classification of Gothic script can be found, among others, in Goethe, who recognized its form as comparable to the Gothic style in architecture and as a “revelation of the German mind”.

Text partly by: Dr Silke Förschler
Photos: Victoria Tomaschko