Now Is Our Time Berlin's RAW-Gelände in Friedrichshain — short for Reichsbahn-Ausbesserungswerk, the National Railway Repair Works — was an industrial rail-repair complex from the late 1860s through the GDR era. Abandoned after reunification, then squatted from the 1990s, it became one of Berlin’s iconic autonomous-cultural zones through the 2000s and early 2010s: clubs, graffiti, volunteer collectives, the kind of place where one part of the city gifted reprieve to another. The Kurth Group acquired most of the site in 2015 and has phased in commercialization since. Graffiti from a walled-off area reads NOW IS OUR TIME, painted on the side of one of the original maintenance halls. Eric photographed it on July 1, 2011 — squarely inside RAW’s permissionless-culture peak, four years before commercial acquisition began the displacement. The declaration was true when it was made; the photograph is the document that survived: a document of survival. The site’s German name carries the irony etymologically: Ausbesserungswerk is a place for repair, and the squat-era community practiced exactly that, 150 years after the term was coined for railways. Nikon D70, 35mm f/1.8 · 1/1000, f/2.2, ISO 200 2011 Jul 1 3008 x 2000 px I, Eric Pan, declare that if this image is selected and purchased by the 6529 Network Museum, the work will be released under CC0, and I have full rights to make that release.