Harf Zimmermann: The Sad-Eyed Lady

In The Sad-Eyed Lady, Berlin-based photographer Harf Zimmerman (born 1955) documents the Berliner Luft- und Badeparadies, a once loved bathing and leisure center in the Britz district of Berlin that is today a graffiti-stained ruin. The center opened in 1985 and welcomed roughly seven million visitors before its closure in 2005 after a series of hygiene complaints. Zimmerman's focus is the center's slow death, the eerie remnants of pleasure that once was. In his words: "This could be the realm of the Snow Queen, where the beautiful princess is imprisoned, trapped by an evil spell. Or it could be the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk beams himself onto a celestial body with Bones and Spock after his sensors register signs of life, only to realize that the aliens have left their planet or been killed before they could escape. And now no-one can know how they looked, those beings, and what purpose the strange objects they left behind may have served."