Matthias Weber
Matthias Weber is a documentary photographer based in Hamburg, focused on the slow disappearance of the city's industrial harbor. A graduate of the HAW Hamburg photography program, he has spent nearly a decade photographing dockworkers, warehouses and shipping infrastructure before demolition or redevelopment. His series Port Stories was exhibited at the Deichtorhallen, and he was a finalist for the DZ Bank photography prize. He continues to work exclusively in black and white film.
The harbor is my studio and my subject. I grew up watching container ships move through the Elbe, and I have spent the last decade photographing the parts of that world that are quietly vanishing: the small repair shops, the manual cranes, the workers whose jobs are being automated away. I shoot only on black and white film because I want the images to sit outside of any particular moment, closer to an archive than to news. Every roll I develop by hand in a small darkroom near the port itself. I am not interested in nostalgia for its own sake. What I want is a record, made with the same patience the harbor itself demands, of a working landscape before it becomes a waterfront apartment complex. The camera lets me stay long enough to actually see it.
Education
- Diplom Photography, HAW Hamburg (2014)
Exhibitions
- HAAM4, Hamburg (2025)
- Port Stories, Deichtorhallen (2022)
Recognition
- DZ Bank Preis finalist (2023)
Artworks by Matthias Weber
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