The exhibition title, Photography Noir. Existence, draws inspiration from Miron Zownir’s 2017 book, Berlin Noir, inviting reflection on its connection to the eponymous cinematic genre. Coined by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, the term “film noir” typically evokes alluring scenes of dimly lit settings with sharp shadows in smoke-filled bars with melodramatic and neurotic characters, detectives sporting fedora hats, gangsters, and femme fatales. However, it’s difficult to imagine something more distant from the oneiric, surrealistic worlds of film noir than the hardcore realism of the photographs by Alexander Chekmenev (Ukraine), Rimaldas Vikšraitis (Lithuania), and Miron Zownir (Germany).