ELSEWHERE at Film Speed Lab: The Story Behind Nico Koch’s Exhibition

When we opened a photo lab in Berlin, we always imagined it with your frames on the walls. Four years later, we've hosted over 20 exhibitions, and each one has been distinct and special.

Here's the story behind our recent show, ELSEWHERE: Nico Koch's first solo exhibition, showcasing his urban street photography stretched across time and shot in different cities, from New York to Berlin.

The Concept Behind ELSEWHERE

ELSEWHERE focuses on the liminal spaces we pass by daily but barely notice: the laundromat around the corner, crosswalks busy by day and deserted by night, streets glowing under neon. All the in-between places we rush through on our way somewhere else. Street photography at its finest.

Instead of documenting different cities, Nico captured the feeling of continuously moving through urban environments. Here, you walk through New York avenues, take the Berlin U-Bahn, and end up in a hotel on the Lower East Side. What holds the frames together is a strangely familiar atmosphere: the kind of feeling that comes from fluorescent light in a convenience store at 3 AM, or an empty platform where you're the only person waiting.

Photographing the Places People Usually Ignore

For Nico, this shift in perspective became the core of his film photography:

"ELSEWHERE is my first solo exhibition and definitely the most personal project I've worked on so far. Over the last years, photography slowly changed the way I look at cities. I started paying attention to the in-between places that repeat everywhere I go: subway stations, laundromats, empty supermarkets, hotel hallways, night streets.

The photos exhibited were never really about specific cities. What they hold is the feeling of moving through them."

Bringing the Photo Series into a Physical Space

To strengthen this feeling of estrangement and urban coldness, we transformed our Berlin photo lab space to make it feel like one of the liminal places Nico photographs.

We added neon lights, a recurring motif in Nico's street photography, set up tablets looping footage of empty spaces across Berlin, Tokyo, and New York, and built a visual narrative for the show, sequencing photos by mood rather than location.

The exhibition opens with deserted underground corners, eerie hallways, and empty subway stations where silhouettes of people occasionally pass. Then it moves into daylight: still empty, but peaceful, the kind of scenes you'd see on an early Sunday morning. It closes with a Lynchian triptych that blurs Berlin and New York and makes it all feel like a fever dream.

Preparing a Film Photography Project for Exhibition

After the concepting comes the most important part: working with your local lab to prepare your analog photography project for printing. You'll need high-quality film developing and scanning to properly evaluate, edit, and sequence your images. A good photo lab will rescan your photos on high-end equipment, tweak the results to your liking, and offer professional advice along the way. 

Why Physical Prints Change the Experience of a Photo Series

No matter how many times we've seen the frames while scanning, editing, and previewing them, we're always in awe once they're printed.

Photo prints completely change how viewers perceive your work. They let you experience scale, convey the mood of a whole series, and reveal visual relationships that are easy to miss on a screen.

At our lab, you can order prints directly from your scans page, or upload digital / analog files after cropping, editing, or any other adjustments. 

Film Speed Lab as a Community Exhibition Space

Our work doesn't stop at sending you scans. We want your photos to make it offline, as prints, postcards, or part of a community exhibition. So feel free to drop us a line if you have a project you'd like to present on our walls. If it's a match, your work will reach a wider audience and connect you with the best people in Berlin's analogue photography community.

Final Thoughts

As a photo lab in Berlin, we support photographers through every part of their journey: from high-quality film developing and scanning to seeing their prints hanging on our walls. We believe your frames deserve more space than an Instagram square, so count us in as your partner for any project you have in mind.