There are few ways Lucia Jost would rather spend a summer day than spread out with her girlfriends on the meadow by Prinzenbad, Berlin’s most iconic outdoor pool. Born and raised in Kreuzberg, she’s been returning to its waters since childhood, through the tangle of her teenage years and into her 20s. "It’s a huge coming-of-age memory for me," she says. "This was the place where you saw how your body changed, where you chased boys for the first time, smoked your first cigarettes. No other place evokes such a strong sense of nostalgia in me. It reminds me of a Berlin I grew up in, which is kind of disappearing."

Jost’s ongoing photo series Prinzessinnenbad (The Princess Pool) is “a personal love letter” to the place, as well as an ode “to sisterhood and collective memory”. Shot on a medium-format analogue camera, her black-and-white portraits centre the women in her extended friendship circle who have been regulars at the pool for decades. Some images are serene, some playful; all carry the warmth of long summer days and enduring friendship.

Officially named Sommerbad Kreuzberg, the pool on Prinzenstraße opened in 1956 as part of a civic health initiative, at a time when many households in the post-war city still lacked running water. It temporarily closed in the late 1970s for a soil decontamination project, before reopening and evolving into the beloved hangout and cultural melting pot it’s known as today. Celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, Prinzenbad remains one of the most socially diverse pockets of the city. “Sommerbad culture is something I deeply cherish. Each pool reflects the people of the district, bringing together families, cultures, and sexualities,” Jost explains. “It’s one of the last places where the everyday diversity of Berlin comes together.”

She draws comparisons to the months she spent in Rio de Janeiro and Marseille. “I’m just obsessed with city beaches,” she says. “These cinematic public spaces in the middle of a concrete jungle where time slows down and you can just be.” She also points to the rarity of a place where you can congregate without consuming. “Prinzenbad is like a holiday place around the corner, especially for those who can’t afford to go abroad. It preserves a Berlin that existed long before Harry Styles, matcha lattes and rising rents – one that’s separate from the nightclubs and the art scene, and rooted in authentic neighbourhood culture.”

The series takes its name and inspiration from Bettina Blümner's 2007 cult documentary Prinzessinnenbad, which follows three Kreuzberg teenagers – Tanutscha, Klara, and Mina – as they navigate friendship, first loves and uncertain futures across a single summer in the neighbourhood. Set to a driving soundtrack of Berlin hip-hop artists, the award-winning film offers an intimate, unfiltered portrait of girlhood. With their restless energy and desire for something to hold onto, Prinzenbad emerges as a second home for the 15-year-old protagonists: a place they orbit and return to, again and again.

"I saw the documentary for the first time when I was 14 and just felt very understood," Jost recalls. "That feeling of walking through the streets with your girlfriends, feeling somehow invincible, gaining new experiences and overcoming insecurities together. These diverse dynamics that develop between women. Blümner captured something that I wanted to revisit through my own lens, for my own generation.”

Among her girl gang, Jost was always the one holding the camera. “I was a proper Tumblr girly, staging moody photoshoots with my friends." This early habit, alongside an obsession with her dad’s 1970s vinyl covers, laid the foundations for her current series. Shooting on film felt like a natural fit for capturing the slower pace of life at the pool, while the soft grain holds the summer light, even in black and white.

Flicking through the photographs, the pool becomes the setting for a kind of spot-the-difference still life painting. In one shot, her friend Tara eats fries off her heavily pregnant belly; the following summer, she poses in the shade with her baby daughter. Despite their vintage, almost timeless feel, Jost considers her images "timestamps of womanhood", marking changes and milestones within her circle.

There’s a mythology to Prinzenbad, “a fairytale feeling”, as Jost puts it, that no amount of gentrification has managed to erase: the couple who’ve run the legendary kiosk for nearly 20 years; the drone of tannoy announcements reuniting parents with stray children; local secrets about how to break in at night; the terrace that serves as a stage for fashion and flirting. Among Jost’s friends, the conversations may have matured – focused now on careers, babies, partners – but the essentials remain: “laughter and gossip, fingers greasy from pool fries, chlorine in the eyes, the smell of suncream.” She concludes, “Prinzenbad is the perfect epitome of the wet hot Berlin summer – the change that happens around the first of May when the city opens up and becomes warm and sexy and familiar again. It will always feel like freedom to me.”