On November 9th 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, marking the end of the Cold War and the unification of East and West Germany. A city whose landscape now consisted of derelict buildings and industrial ruins, within those cracks, a new generation found their home. Transforming the rubble into underground raves, squat homes and venues that would go on to become some of the German capital’s most revered clubs, it marked the beginning of a decade that would cement Berlin’s reputation as the techno capital of the world.

In the midst of it all, at just seventeen years old, was Christian Stemmler: armed with a film camera and a desire for the liberation found on a dimly lit dance floor, enthralled by the sound of a thumping soundsystem pulsing at a steady 130 BPM. His point-and-shoot snapshots document the beauty of fleeting human connection, capturing drinks around kitchen tables as the sun rises, and the in-between moments of sweaty euphoria just before the beat drops. At a time when the perfectionism of social media and content creation is at an all-time high, Stemmler’s images are a time capsule of messiness, passion and genuine individualism.

Ella Joyce: Can you tell us about when you first picked up a camera?  
Christian Stemmler: I don’t remember the exact moment, but I remember my first selfie – it’s on one of the first rolls from 1994. I was seventeen. I’d just left my parents’ home and moved into a squat. I dyed my hair blonde for the first time that day and felt incredibly free and beautiful. I  took it while lying in bed and still remember how the sheets felt, how the room smelled,  and how cold it was. Mostly, I just took one picture – there weren’t multiple tries, and I couldn’t check how it looked. 

EJ: What was the atmosphere like in the midst of the club scene in Berlin in the 90s?
CS: There were just a few clubs, mostly in abandoned factory buildings (Hirschbar, Walfisch),  electricity plants (E-Werk), or even a vault of a former department store (Tresor). The clubs were very raw and simple, with very little decoration. The scene was very small – it felt like just a few hundred people, very intimate. I remember my very first party at Walfisch. There were no more than 200 people, and I was dancing to these new sounds – the bass made my body vibrate, and a laser would cut through the thick haze of the smoke machine. It felt like entering another dimension. 

“Up until the late ’90s, it felt like a huge playground, and every type of abandoned place was somehow turned into a club”

EJ: What do you think made that era so significant? At the time, did you feel as if you were capturing a moment in history? 
CS: Historically, it was a very challenging but fascinating time. The GDR (former East  Germany), the country most of us were born and had grown up in, no longer existed. The  Wall had come down just a few years earlier. We were all raised under communism, and then – from one day to the next – everything changed. The energy in Berlin was unique because East and West collided here. That clash of two worlds helped create something entirely new and gave the city a very unique energy. The city was very raw; there was a lot of space, a lot of abandoned buildings, stretches of industrial wasteland and that’s where the clubs moved in. I think at that particular moment, I didn’t understand the significance of this historical shift – now it’s very clear. 

EJ: What was your relationship like with the people you photographed?
CS: Most of the people in the pictures were my closest friends, my flatmates, my crushes,  people I was madly in love with – my chosen family. I spent many years of my life with many of them, some even up until today. 

“Most of the people in the pictures were my closest friends, my flatmates, my crushes,  people I was madly in love with – my chosen family.”

EJ: Berlin is the blueprint for techno and club culture. How have you seen it shift over the years? 
CS: Up until the late 90s, it felt like a huge playground, and every type of abandoned place was somehow turned into a club. It wasn’t about making money – people just wanted to gather, even if it was only 50 people. Almost every few months, there was a new party or club somewhere. Everything happened by word of mouth. Paper flyers would show up a week or two before the parties, and a pocket-sized magazine called Flyer listed the parties and line-ups of the main clubs for the next two weeks. 

Tresor and E-Werk were the main powerhouses, but there were also many great smaller clubs like Suicide Circus, KitKat Club, and parties like Electric Ballroom or Bpitch Control, which later became Ellen Allien’s famous record label. Around the turn of the millennium, with the rise of mobile phones and the internet, things started to change. Everything became more accessible. It became easier and cheaper to travel, so more tourists started to come. But the clubs of the 2000s were still pretty amazing – Ostgut closed in 2003 with an epic closing party, and Berghain opened in late 2004. From the late 2000s, social media began to glue us to our phones, and I think that was the beginning of the end. I stopped going out in Berlin in 2005, and aside from a few parties in 2015 and 2016, I  never really returned to the clubs there again. 

EJ: At a time when smartphones and social media are the norm, what do you hope people take away from this time capsule of images?
CS: What I want to say – and also encourage people to do – is to go out and meet people, feel a human connection. Real-life human connection. This is what we’re losing more and more. Many of us, including myself, spend too much time in our digital bubble, and I think from there, we’re not going to change the world in the way we need to right now.

ANFANG/BEGINNING: BERLIN 1994-99 by Christian Stemmler, published by IDEA Ltd, will be available to shop here from June 26th.