Blissful photos of friends reuniting amid a steamy Berlin summer

Summer is mostly made up of the in-between moments: the gaps between trips and festivals, wandering around your city, meeting friends for a drink, or sitting in the park until the sun goes down. These are the times that can easily disappear into the noise of summer, despite often being the ones that stay with us longest. Photographer Vincent Wechselberger and multidisciplinary artist Noam Yarik Gil Shuster capture that uncontrived beauty in their latest collaborative project, Catching Up on Missing Time.

The photographs were taken over seven hours in Berlin last month, when Shuster came to stay with Wechselberger for one night. Taking turns behind the camera, the pair documented a day spent together after two years of living in different cities. “When we took the shots, Noam was going through a breakup and I was busy working on producing my next book,” Wechselberger explains. “Neither of us really wanted to go out and lose ourselves like we used to together.”

Instead, the two friends found themselves spending a slow day in the Berlin heat: grabbing coffee, walking around Friedrichshain, biking through the city and eventually swimming in the Spree. “That day, since we were both turning a new page in our lives, escaping into one of Berlin’s big green parks just felt like the right thing to do,” he explains.

It was a world away from the nights that had once brought them together. “We actually met at Berghain, which feels almost funny to say out loud,” Wechselberger says. From there, the pair forged a friendship that has lasted seven years, collaborating on shoots and art projects before Shuster moved to Amsterdam two years ago. Their connection hasn’t faltered despite the distance. “These days, whenever I’m stuck on something, she’s the person I call, her feedback has a zero bullshit approach, and she has a way of calming me down when I spiral.”

The project is another extension of Wechselberger’s practice of intimately documenting the relationships around him, something also present in his photo series Sisters, which explores the evolving intimacy between him and his queer siblings. “There’s one photo Noam took of me lying next to a dead fish, which is funny to me because I actually have an almost identical photo of my sister Flora, lying next to a dead rat while she is smoking a cigarette,” he says. “Noam is really close with Flora too. Noam is basically another one of my sisters at this point, part of the family.”

When asked about his other favourite photographs in the project, Wechselberger points to a shot of himself urinating – a callback to their first meeting at Berghain, where they spent hours traversing the club in search of somewhere to pee. He also points to the portraits they took as they settled into the grass and the evening light came in. “I think these two are honestly the best portraits we’ve ever taken of each other. We held it for like two minutes, looking deep into each other’s eyes, waiting for the perfect moment where the light peaked through the trees, and it never once felt awkward. Just getting lost in each other‘s souls.”

For both of them, the photographs distill the ease of returning to a friendship. “Even with distance and time apart, we fall right back into an easy rhythm. I think we bring out each other’s beauty, physically, but also the inner kind, that feeling of being seen and safe, a sense of calm that not many people get to see.”