Guy Batey has been living in Berlin since 2013. He has worked and exhibited as a photographer since 2005, after many years as an abstract painter in London.
'In 2014 I began to have a growing sense of
foreboding. I started to feel that the signs of the
past I found everywhere in Berlin were warnings
that history could soon repeat itself. There was
a pervasive sense of a world out of kilter, of
something amiss.
Yet there didn't apparently seem so much wrong
with the world. Europe was full of confidence,
and the political centre felt itself dominant and
invulnerable. So I continued to take these anxious
photographs, and put it all down to an over-active
imagination and middle-aged gloom.
Five years on, and it's hard to believe how much
has changed. What, not so long ago, would have
been unthinkable is now all too real. The far right
is active across Europe, and around the globe,
nationalism is spreading hatred and fear. The world
and the liberal values I grew up with are beginning
to look like a thing of the past.
What comes next is uncertain: it might not be
as bleak as I fear. But always at the back of my
mind are the words of Primo Levi, survivor of
the Holocaust: "It has happened, therefore it can
happen again."'
44 pages of photographs and texts