Black in Berlin

Who are we?

When Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were murdered by police officers in 2020, the global protest movement Black Lives Matter got high attention. In Berlin, like many other places, people demonstrated their solidarity. Yero Adugna Eticha (b. in Oromia, Ethiopia; lives and works in Berlin) decided to get active and document Black life in Berlin. He walked through the streets of Berlin handing out flyers inviting Black people to be photographed by him. In the following two years, Adugna Eticha portrayed over 512 people, listened to their stories and learned the mundane but moving details of their lives during the encounters.

Black in Berlin presents a selection of these encounters. They are 100 portraits of the multifaceted realities of the Black diaspora’s life in Berlin: the author, the opera singer, the white-collar single mom, and the pensioner. With a conversation between Yvette Mutumba and the artist.