Ever since Maxime Ballesteros came to Berlin in 2007, the city’s art scene, their parties, and its fashion crowd have become ridiculously more attractive – in photos, at least. Ballesteros’s portraits have a gritty intimacy and raw immediacy to them that makes you want to get to know the people captured with his camera a lot more closely. Photographing for numerous publications worldwide, including dazed digital, purple diary, interview magazine, artforum and, of course, sleek, Ballesteros has become something of an encyclopaedist of today’s Berlin.