Kuba Freter’s latest series “Dreamers” blurs reality and fiction in raw, black-and-white images of youth, skate culture, and collective longing. A must-see feature via Munchies Art Club.
When Life Becomes a Movie: Skate Bowls, Skinheads & The Spirit of Dreamers
The room he woke up in felt like déjà vu — not metaphorically, but literally.
That’s how it all began for Kuba Freter’s “Dreamers.”
A joint, a skater named Kajtek, and a crash landing into a world that was already waiting for him in his sleep. These aren't just photographs.
“Our dreams get even bigger if you dream them together.” – Kuba Freter
They’re fragments of a myth Freter helped live, then documented — half-real, half-film, fully alive.
Bubble Skateboard Magazine
Born in Poland, based in Cologne, Freter has always followed instinct over intention. His first series, And miles to go before I sleep, made that clear.
It was a quiet chronicle of motion — stray dogs, backstreets, and the subtle lyricism of everyday life, always analog, always patient.
Kuba Freter Dreamers: Analog Phtogography - Permission and courtesy of the artist
But with Dreamers, something cracked open. Youth took the wheel. And the film didn’t just capture the moment — it became it.
The series spans real life and a movie set, yet you can’t tell which is which — not even Freter can, probably. A skater crew from Wrocław turns a rundown apartment into a communal haven. A club opens.
A wooden bowl is built inside. The parties burn fast and bright. Then it ends. Life kicks in. But on the last night, a director walks in, sees the gold, and casts them in a film.
Freter, camera in hand, morphs into a witness of the breakdown and the re-enactment. The photos blur. Skinheads show up — fictional ones. Slams happen — fake, but too real. Time folds.
His images — raw, grainy, and out-of-focus — don’t apologize. They’re not here to be polished or pretty.
They breathe like the kids in them do: messy, spontaneous, wide-eyed. These aren’t portraits. They’re glimpses into a collective adolescence, running on dreams and nicotine.
What makes Dreamers remarkable is not its documentation of youth culture — we’ve seen that before.
Basil Beattie, Kottie Paloma, Malte Zenses and Philip Emde Artist Portraits by Kuba Freter
It’s the paradox at its core. The real feels scripted, the staged feels realer. It’s skate culture, but it’s also a fiction of itself. Freter isn’t above or outside of it. He’s inside the flat, on the floor, maybe high, definitely human.
Dominique Catherina Foertig
Basil Beatie
There’s a beautiful contradiction in his choice to shoot black and white. It distances the chaos just enough to universalize it.
The faces — tired, triumphant, bruised — become every teenager who’s ever tried to outrun adulthood. No hashtags, no nostalgia filter. Just the kind of honest lens you only get when you're not trying to make art.
Kuba Freter
In a world drowning in curated selfies and faux-documentary aesthetics, Freter’s work reminds us: you can’t fake the real. But you can blur it — and sometimes, that’s where the truth shows up.
Kuba Freter - Cologne
His evolution from the poetic stillness of Miles to go to the loud heartbeat of Dreamers shows what happens when an artist stops looking and starts belonging.
Freter doesn't just take photos of youth. He moves with them, smokes with them, gets lost in the noise.
That’s the difference.
And that’s why these images stay with you — long after you scroll past them.
➤ Follow Kuba Freter & DoD Gallery — this ride isn’t over.
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