Smithsonian Magazine - 11.2019

(Joyce) #1

prologue


ART

T


By
Amy Crawford

Diane Meyer
walked the entire
96-mile perime-
ter of the former
wall to take
pictures for her
hand-sewn pho-
tograph series
“Berlin.” Above,
Brandenburg
Gate, 2015.

©DIANE MEYER / COURTESY KLOMPCHING GALLERY, NEW YORK

LONG DIVISION


Even after a terrible barrier comes down, an
artist conjures its haunting presence

12 SMITHSONIAN.COM | November 2019

HE FALL OF THE Berlin Wall began on
November 9, 1989, when an East German
offi cial prematurely announced that the
government would lift restrictions on trav-
el to West Germany. That weekend , more
than two million Berliners streamed across
the border, some scaling the wall or smashing it with
sledgehammers and pickaxes. Most of the physical
wall is gone now, but its lingering impact fascinates
Diane Meyer, a photographer in Los Angeles. For

her recent series “Berlin” (at Brooklyn’s Klompching
Gallery until January 10 ), she created photographs of
places where the wall once stood and then represent-
ed i t with delicate embroidery—as if all that remained
of the barrier were fading threads of memory. Modern
Berlin is booming, and sleek new buildings occupy
much of the “death zone ” between the east and west
sides of the wall , but, Meyer fi nds, “1989 wasn’t that
long ago. The wall today is almost ghostlike—even
though it isn’t there, you can still feel it.”
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