Benjamin Reding

Als Dortmund ein Vorort von London war (When Dortmund was a Suburb of London) features a collection of photographs taken by an eighteen-year-old Benjamin Reding in a city undergoing a process of transition. In late 1980s Dortmund-a city shaped by industrial decline, vacant spaces, and upheaval-he proposed an alternative to the common media depiction of youth culture. Instead of familiar cliches, his photographs depict a scene that straddles pop culture, performance, desire, and self-assertion, influenced by the visual culture of London yet firmly rooted in the Ruhr region. Reding photographed friends, musicians, subcultures, and urban spaces with an eye that not only documented reality but also reimagined and redesigned it. In his images, Dortmund appears as a projection space for diversity, role switching and the youthful avantgarde. For decades, the images remained unpublished. Today, they offer a surprisingly contemporary glimpse into a time when the possibilities of identity and belonging were beginning to emerge visually even before they had been established at the societal level.