Inkjet print fron 5x4 in colour transparency, 50.8 x 50.8 cm (20.0 x 20.0 in), edition of 3 + 1 AP.

When I first visited Berlin, I lodged with a family on the fourth floor of an old tenement, and from my window, I could see where the Wall had once stood. On Saturday mornings, I would walk to the supermarket and the laundrette, following the red dashed line that still marked its path on my map. There was nothing left to see on the streets, yet it felt like a scar after the stitches had been removed.

Several years later, I returned to visit an old friend who had recently moved to Berlin for work. He was renting a newly renovated flat in a fully gentrified area—also near the Wall, but on the other side. Wanting to see what remained of it, I asked if I could borrow his guest bike to cycle the 160-kilometre Berlin Wall Trail.

The ride ended where it had begun, at the Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse. As I walked along a stretch of wasteland between the street and a row of new houses, once the death strip between the border wall and the hinterland wall, a jagged piece of concrete caught my eye. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. It felt right. Although I couldn’t be sure it was truly a fragment of the Wall, I decided to take it home and use it to make this photograph.

At the airport, a security guard asked me to open my trolley and found it carefully wrapped in newspaper.

“It’s a souvenir of the Wall,” I said apologetically, anticipating his question.

“You mean our Wall?” he replied.