Kai-Olaf Hesse is a documentary photographer, currently based in Berlin.

She began to study visual arts in 2011. She is currently working as a documentary and portrait photographer, exploring personalities of the people around with the help of her camera.

She’s working mostly on long-term personal projects, on the subjects closely connected to her own biography – mostly questioning people’s identity, sexuality, representation, psychology, lifestyle and finding oneself within a new society and community.

In her projects she tries to question existing social rules and labels: from having a family, relationships and daily job to living in a big city and being a part of the capitalist system.

Ferropolis is a place of ghosts and giants. Once a massive open-cast coal mine, this “City of Iron” has transitioned from an industrial labor site to hosting techno festivals.

In this project, I document the festival-goers in this industrial surrounding – individuals whose vibrant, expressive presence stands in stark contrast to the rusted, monumental scale of the giant machines. I am exploring the silent interaction between human identity and a landscape built for utility.

Ultimately, this work is a study of transformation. It captures the moment a site marked by a “heavy” history is reimagined as a stage for community and self-expression. It is an exploration of the “temporary utopia”– that brief moment of time where the rigidity of the past gives way to the total freedom of the present.