In 2013, Steven Seidenberg encountered the pipevalves (in German, Reinigungsöffnung) depicted in this volume on daily walks around the neighborhood in which he was based during a residency in Berlin. He was hooked at once by their totemic quality, and he first photographed the two located on the same block as his studio. As he walked in and beyond the neighborhood he realized that the structures were concentrated within an area measuring just over .5 square km. Across most of Berlin, the cast-iron fittings photographed in this volume have largely disappeared, replaced by plastic and aluminum plates throughout the East Berlin neighborhoods where they were once prevalent. 

​Pipevalve: Berlin consists of 74 photographs of a drainage pipe fitting followed by a series of aphorisms written by Seidenberg to accompany the images. Two essays accompany the work. The first, by archaeologist and historic preservationist Carolyn L. White, situates Seidenberg's images and his accompanying prose as evidence of the material world of Berlin and as a kind of archaeological practice. Art historian Peter R. Kalb contextualizes the images within the trajectory of contemporary photography's interest in the microspaces of daily life while viewing them as a way of seeing and of experiencing a state of attention.