Die Schlange (The Snake)

PHOTOGRAPHY

Jun 8

With her project Die Schlange, photographer Nancy Jesse presents a hauntingly intimate and cinematic portrayal of life within a surreal architectural organism. The vast Berlin housing complex has been built above a motorway and contains over 1,000 apartments. Her use of light and framing evokes a dreamlike, almost dystopian atmosphere – subtly echoing the building's strange, pulsating core.

Photography Nancy Jesse

There is a very special building in the west of Berlin called ‘Die Schlange’, which literally translates as “The Snake”. It is a housing machine with more than 1000 apartments, which was built during the era of the Motor City. Its heartbeat is the city motorway that runs through the middle of the building.

The people who live here cannot see the motorway. But they hear and feel it: they can hear the heartbeat in the many corridors, crossings, connecting passages and passageways that criss-cross the motorway like little lifelines. The rumble of the lorries as they plunge into the belly of the snake – the heartbeat of this huge creature. The quiet ‘tatamm tatamm’ accompanies the pedestrians through the long corridors on their way to the flats built above, on and next to the invisible motorway.

“It is a surreal feeling that visitors have here. It’s as if you’ve landed in a spaceship from an old science fiction film.”

It is a surreal feeling that visitors have here. It’s as if you’ve landed in a spaceship from an old science fiction film. I explored this feeling with my photo series. I explored this place over many months and photographed the encounters and moments. A photographic ‘stream of consciousness’ of images that describe my emotions and the connections I made to this place.

About Nancy

Nancy Jesse is a freelance photographer based in Berlin, where she works on personal and comissioned projects.

Nancy was born before the fall of the wall in a little village in the East of Germany. Her biography reflects the turbulence of the German reunification. Even today, Nancy is still deeply interested in this topic and the subjects of identity (loss, rediscovery), belonging and collective cultural memories are part of her photographic explorations.

In 2023, Nancy graduated from Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie in Berlin. For her graduation project ‘No Man is an Island’, she photographed the community of a small island in the West of Scotland.

To see more of her work, visit her website or follow her on Instagram.

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With her project Die Schlange, photographer Nancy Jesse presents a hauntingly intimate and cinematic portrayal of life within a surreal architectural organism. The vast Berlin housing complex has been built above a motorway and contains over 1,000 apartments. Her use of light and framing evokes a dreamlike, almost dystopian atmosphere—subtly echoing the building's strange, pulsating core.

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Die Schlange (The Snake)

“It is a surreal feeling that visitors have here. It’s as if you’ve landed in a spaceship from an old science fiction film.”

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