These photos document a decade of hedonism in Berlin

Live in a city long enough, and there comes a point where you stop experiencing it in chapters and start experiencing it in books – periods of time that feel complete and almost tangible, like objects outside of yourself. For Vincent Wechselberger, that shift began last year around his 27th birthday and culminated this August, as he marked ten years in Berlin. 

“Berlin is a city where I saw myself, found myself, lost myself, and found myself again,” he tells Dazed, reflecting on “the beauty and the chaos” of the past decade. “Recently, though, I’ve felt a shift in my own energy and in how I want to live my life. I feel like I’ve come to the end of an era.” Spanning images from his arrival in 2016 at the age of 18, fresh from small-town Austria, to 2026, his new photobook, Dreams and How to Keep Them, is that era made manifest.

At its heart are the people who shaped the person he became here. Portraits of friends and family are interspersed with those of strangers and lovers who passed into his life for one sleepless weekend, or perhaps no more than a kiss on a dancefloor. The book expands in scope through Wechselberger’s sex work to include scenes from hotel rooms around the world – Paris, Bangkok, Mexico – and contracts again through still-life shots of the objects and rituals that texture this era as much as the milestones: bananas, baggies, ashtrays, cash on counters, lines on phone screens. “It’s a book about love as much as it’s a book about breakfast,” he smiles.

While Dreams offers a diaristic insight into the photographer’s shifting internal landscape, it also traces the changing atmosphere of the city. It follows the unfettered hedonism of the late 2010s into the intense interiority of Covid lockdowns, when the parties moved from clubs to apartments; the intoxicating rush of the early 2020s, as the city came alive again but struggled to find its footing; and the political turbulence of the years since.

For anyone familiar with Berlin – and perhaps even for those who aren’t – there’s something about the light in particular that triggers pangs of second-hand nostalgia: the soft sigh of summer shadows across lake days and open airs; the gold tinge of early autumn dusting topless bodies on windowsills; the shy rose-milk of a winter dawn that side-eyes the party but does not come to claim it. Wechselberger brings you along for all of it, as night slips into day into night, weekends into months into years.

“Many people say that Berlin is a city for lost souls, which I don’t think is true. I think there are so many beautiful, creative people here who just get lost in the rhythm of the city and also the German system,” he contends. “I spiral sometimes, I run in circles. But lately, my friends and I want to break free from that rhythm and put our energies into other things. For me, it’s my creative career.”

This touches on the paradox of Berlin: how it feeds creativity but can also distract from it. “Sometimes I wish I never got caught up in the substances and the scene. But then it’s because I’m dancing half-naked at the party with everyone else that they trust me and open up in front of my camera,” Wechselberger continues. “I think I often want it all: to be completely inside the situation, experiencing it, but also stepping outside of it to capture the moment.”

Just as physical touch is everywhere in the photographs, it is also present in Wechselberger’s process. “I hand-printed the images myself in the darkroom, with the help of my friend Cy Klock,” he explains. “I’m a very affectionate person. I love body contact and holding and being held. It’s what I am doing with the photographs: gathering them, keeping them close, but also, in a sense, letting go of them.”

There’s a double meaning lodged in the book’s title. Dreams are at once future things – imagined, desired, moved towards – and also the realm of memory, populated by people and places from our past. Dreams and How to Keep Them tries to hold both at once. It’s Wechselberger’s way of memorialising the decade that made him while not losing sight of where he’s going. As he writes in the book’s afterword: “I see it as the first true goodbye as I grow into myself.”

Published by SMUT Press, Dreams and How to Keep Them is launching in Berlin at BAM Practice on 10 September 2026, and will be on show in Wechselberger’s first solo exhibition at 1014 Gallery in London, 17 September – 16 October 2026.