The night photograph shows a busy West Berlin shopping street around 1955, its façades illuminated by a multitude of glowing neon signs and shop window lighting. Parked vehicles line the foreground, while the gleam of lights extends down the street in long perspective. The image is characteristic documentary material for the emerging economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder) in the western part of the city. West Berlin deliberately cultivated the image of a luminous “showcase of the West” during this period — a visual contrast to the austere appearance of the eastern part of the divided city. The dense neon advertising symbolizes consumption, reconstruction, and the Western lifestyle in the midst of the Cold War.