Here’s what Berlin clubbers look like after 24 hours at Berghain

Most can agree that when the lights come on at the club, it’s not a very Godly sight. Creatures crawl from the club’s recesses and spill out onto the streets, others clammy and wide-eyed, desperately attempting to keep the party alive. In those fleeting moments, we rarely get to see the beauty in that post-club daze.

In an effort to capture the “exhausted, euphoric and vulnerable” trance state of clubbers who have partied all night, photographer Chris Noltekuhlmann spent several years photographing over 350 Berlin partygoers in his studio. The long-term project, aimed at capturing intimate portraits of the city’s iconic club community from KitKat to Berghain, has now been turned into a book named Berlin Night After Glow.

Chris' portraits capture punters “directly after leaving Berlin clubs and raves”, rather than inside the venues themselves. “I became increasingly interested in what people carried with them once the music stopped – emotionally, physically, and psychologically,” he says. “To respect the privacy and autonomy of these environments, I invited people into my studio after nights out and photographed them exactly as they arrived: exhausted, euphoric, vulnerable, emotionally open, and often still visibly somewhere between the rave and reality.”

As well as its spread of more than 200 portraits, Berlin Night After Glow also features an essay and a series of interviews by writer Cassidy George, and conversations with “musicians, club kids and nightlife industry insiders” on topics spanning political activism to queer identity.

With fetishwear and makeup still intact, energy drinks in hand and the not-so-distant memories of last night replaying through their head, here’s a sneak peek of the woozy beauty of Berlin’s club community after the lights come up. Check them out below, and grab your copy of Berlin Night After Glow here.