2022 - 2024 Exit is a photographic series centered on the emergency hatches of Berlin’s U-Bahn network. Normally sealed and embedded almost invisibly within the urban fabric, these overlooked structures are photographed in an open state, briefly interrupting their everyday invisibility and introducing a moment of uncertainty into the city.
Rather than functioning as direct representations of crisis, the images operate within a condition of latency. The emergency hatches belong to an infrastructure designed for exceptional situations, yet in everyday life they remain inactive and largely unnoticed. By temporarily activating them, Exit shifts attention toward the suspended state between readiness and event.
The project developed through an extensive mapping of Berlin’s U-Bahn system. Behrendt walked the metro lines—covering a total distance of 156 km—above ground, tracing their routes through the city and documenting the distribution of emergency exits embedded along them. In his workbook, he meticulously catalogued all 324 emergency exits, which appear on average every 350 meters to provide short escape routes in case of emergency. In a second phase, selected structures were opened and photographed in their state of activation, revealing a hidden layer of urban infrastructure that normally remains outside perception.
The photographs do not explain why these hatches are open or what event could have caused it. They withhold narrative resolution and instead hold a state of ambiguity—between activation and absence, function and interruption.
What emerges is not a depiction of disaster, but the structural anticipation of it: a city organised around the possibility of an event that may never occur.
In parallel, the work introduces a shift in perspective. Some images remain exterior and detached, while others move into the position of the threshold itself—offering a view outward from within the structure. Between these positions, the work oscillates between observation and embodiment, suggesting that urban infrastructure is not only spatial but also perceptual. In its presentation, the work is organized into so-called arrangements, ranging from diptychs to polyptychs, including constellations of up to five works conceived as single units. Lacquered color panels, integrated into these arrangements, draw on the color coding of Berlin’s metro lines to position each exit within the network. At the same time, they introduce a distinct visual rhythm, linking functional orientation with an aesthetic dimension that echoes systems of mapping and navigation.
Exit reflects on the thin line between security and vulnerability, order and chaos, and on how systems of protection are embedded within the fabric of the city, shaping our perception of space even in their inactivity. It proposes a reading of the urban environment as a field of latent structures—always present, yet only momentarily visible. What emerges is a city held in suspension: prepared, but unresolved; visible, yet never fully revealed. The opened hatches become thresholds without destination—markers of a condition in which the event remains absent, yet perpetually imminent.