»Encountering a human being means being kept awake by an enigma«.
Emmanuel Levinas

In her photo series, Alisa Resnik combines images mainly taken at night in Berlin. Leaden-colored scenes, greasy spoon cafés, echoed empty halls, old hotel rooms still holding on to a subtle feeling of the past, and people’s faces… Hurried glances, small awkward gestures, hands searching for support, grief or harshness in the corner of an eye.

»An identity is temporarily fixed, defined by the encounter between the photographer and the subject. Once the encounter is over, the moment survives only in the image. This is why Alisa Resnik’s photography inspires such an unsettling combination of awe and ache. The portraits evoke a startling and complex human beauty. Yet, there is also a vague sadness that these moments have long since dissolved and can never be recaptured. One of the essential elements of these moments is the fact that Resnik doesn’t consider herself a photographer. For her, the camera is just a tool. The encounter is primary and the human connection is the goal. Any images are incidental, something to be assessed later and valued only if they respect the truth of the encounter«. (from the text by Jeremy Mercer)

The project won the European Publishers Award for Photography and has been published simultaneously in five editions, in five languages.