SPOTLIGHTING – Turning the Lens on Journalism

We consume headlines every day without asking who made them.

AI-generated noise floods our feeds. Trust in journalism is eroding. And behind every story we scroll past, there is  someone who waited, witnessed, decided, and carried the weight of what they saw. That person and their story often remain invisible to us. And that invisibility might be costing us something we can't afford to lose.

SPOTLIGHTING pulls back the curtain.

This exhibition brings international documentary photography into direct conversation with the question we rarely ask: who makes the news, and how? It turns the camera around — away from the event, toward the people capturing it. 

At a time when journalism is under pressure from all sides, including political, economic, technological, SPOTLIGHTING insists on something simple: that the work is real, that it matters, and that it deserves to be seen.

The photographs in this exhibition do not show us the news. They show us the people who make independent  journalism possible.

Selected photographs from international documentary photographers, chosen through an open call, bring into frame the meticulous, often invisible practice of journalism — the fixers, the photographers, the reporters, the editors. The people who choose what to show, and what that choice costs them.

This is not a celebration of journalism as an institution. It is a portrait of journalism as a human practice—flawed, essential, and quietly heroic.

Location: Brunnenstrasse 105-109, 13355 Berlin (Culterim | Backshop)

Exhibition dates: 7 to 29 March 2026

Opening hours: Thursday to Sunday, 2 to 6 pm

Featuring works by:

Marko Risovic (Serbia), Tako Robakidze (Georgia), Denislav Stoychev (Bulgaria),
Florian Scheible (Germany), Georgi Totev (Bulgaria), Paweł Starzec (Poland)