Dessauer Strasse today lies in the centre of Berlin. When the city was still divided, the street found itself on the outermost edge of West Berlin, located in the immediate vicinity of the Wall. The entire area remained wasteland even into the 1990s and called to mind the vast stretches of bombed-out empty space at the end of the Second World War.

Hermann Pitz’s illuminated pyramid offers a razor-sharp, three-dimensional view of the traces of the war inscribed in the urban fabric. Its oblique outer faces show three photographs, taken from different angles, of a wartime ruin. Almost the only part left of the large building was the stairwell. With his sculpture of images, Pitz backlights not only history, but also the potential and limits of photography as a documentary medium.