art watching (III)

i've got the bronica back from the camera repair place, and the first roll of black and white film too. very excited to shoot more with this new camera, it's like starting from scratch all over.

i like the theatrical quality of the second (very dark) shot. methinks, finding out which b/w film to use in which light conditions will be a bit of a challenge. do you have any particular black-and-white favourites, both for indoors and outdoors? film talk aside, i've been happy to hear from you over the past few weeks, keep leaving me a little thought, or perhaps just a little hello if you feel like it!

(top: entrance area to abc 2012
bottom: christoph keller's 'expedition-bus and shaman-travel',
presented by esther schipper gallery at abc 2012)

//

the other night at a friends' party. it was a very good night.

urban walk (II)

we went to see the glorious anthony mccall light sculptures at hamburger bahnhof (museum of contemporary art), and took lots of pictures. sadly, i wasn't allowed to use my tripod, and when i went to pick up the roll from the lab, i found that none of the light images had come out. well, that was a bit of a downer.

anyway, there still are a handful of images on the roll. these are two of the survivors. taken at the barn, where we fortified ourselves with cake and some pop. the writing on marion's new bag - "dit is mir jacke wie hose" - is berlin speak for "all the same to me" or "i don't mind", literally "like jacket like trousers to me." you wonder how they cooked up that saying.

have a good start to your week (or enjoy the labor day weekend, if you're lucky enough)!

same but different (III)

and this is berlin, too. (top photo taken by marion. merci, copine!)

same but different (II)

more teufelsberg. eh, marion, looking good!

same but different (I)

when marion came, we went to see teufelsberg - venturing deep into the cold war past of berlin. american intelligence built a station on a hill in the southwest of the city, listening in to communications behind the iron curtain. the place is locked off now, and going to shambles - eerie. we both took pictures, this is my part of the story. same but different.

///

well hello, it's been a while.

it feels like i have lost my way somehow, all picture taking seemed utterly random. in a way, it still does. creative rut, persistent blues and all that. but i'd like to give it a try, and see what happens.

this place is my peaceful haven. i miss it, i have missed my conversations with you. how are you?

flow

it was a quiet hour in the afternoon when i took these portraits of my friend gabriele. more details over here.

//

sometimes, it's all in the details.

mies et marion

marion suggested paying mies a visit, and we did. and look, how well they got on!

the house, originally landhaus lemke (1932), is tiny. like so many places in berlin, it has a complex history. after the war, the russian allies used it as a garage, in the 1960s, it was used by the stasi (east german secret service) as laundry storage. today, you can visit the house - it is almost empty, there is no signage, there are no wall texts, no plaques, no explanations. which is astonishing. at the same time, it gives you the chance to just see and feel the place, the light, the textures.

a few days later i found myself pondering how mr and mrs lemke, the original owners, might have used the space. i can work out kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom (fairly obvious), but how did they use the two main rooms? did they choose to have the view onto the garden and the little lake beyond from the living room? and how did they furnish the rooms? a look at the house's website gives you an idea, and i must say, well, in this instance, i agree to disagree with mies. i bet the carpets were chosen by the lemke's though. oh, the absence of taste.

p.s.: don't forget you can still enter for my little giveaway. i will draw a winner this coming sunday.

having

having a gift: is it an obligation (or: does having a talent imply the courage to use it)?

lights

first, you are amazing, thank you so much for your feedback on my last post, i was really quite stunned by all the love. wow. thank you. the praktica says thank you, too. she'll get out more often now.

november is a month i didn't use to like very much. grey. very often rainy in these parts. and cold. but this year i like it: the crisp, cool air on my face when i'm riding my bike, the misty days, the mood of 'yes, we are definitely in between autumn and winter'. november has got a certain magic this year, and i like it.

by the way, i think i need a scanner. i love the people at my lab, they are super friendly, but the scans very often have dust specks, contrast is not good etc. i need a scanner that's mac compatible though. any recommendations?

the light above is from kolor. oh, and i like this calendar.

how things are

i was wondering why i rather rarely post images that are recognisably berlin. i think it is because i am easily bored with clichées of this city. but of course, i would happily snap the eiffel tower when in paris. although, when in london, i never photographed red buses or the tower bridge either. so maybe no eiffel tower? anyway, i took these a while ago, the first two in 2011, the bottom two in 2009 and somehow, they are berlin to me.

on a different note: for a while now, i have felt that the subjects that interest me are fundamentally changing, that my general aesthetic is somehow taking different turns. it is a bit unsettling, but i'll just have to wait what evolves. it's possibly going to be less images hereabouts, for a while. i'm not sure. wish i could tell you.

but i'm hoping that you are hanging in there.

would you tell me what you are up to and what you're mulling over these days, as the seasons change again?

five words

She didn’t even want to begin to speculate how many tubes of toothpaste she had tried to squeeze the very last, itty bitty minty whiteness out of, having forgotten to buy new supply. She was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, grimacing at her reflection with the faint red line of pillow crease running across her left cheek. It was her birthday at the end of the week, a few friends were coming for dinner, she’d better do the shopping list soon.

In the kitchen a quick cup of tea, some buttered toast, the last uncontaminated slice, the rest had grown mouldy overnight. She left the house; far too late; again. Ran down the street, to the station. “Here we go,” she thought, “Monday morning, how I love thee.” There was a bit of wind, the last few leaves would soon be chased along the pavement, trodden on, drowning in a sad dirty puddle. City leaves had really pulled the short straw, she thought, unless you count the ones in the park. Much better to be a country leaf. Although. Who knows.

The girl on the train pulled off her poppy red beret, pushed it into her bag and took out a book. She had wrapped it into a sleeve made from newspaper. “Must be rubbing ink onto her fingers,” she thought. Were there people who didn’t analyse everything they saw? Who just zoned out? Perhaps she should try doing that.

How she hated the train. Tomorrow she’d take the bus. Or a duvet day. She was washed onto the platform and up the elevator. Thinking about the meeting already. Perhaps she should come out with her idea at the very end. Or perhaps she should just leave. Run a farm. Buy a few chickens, and a goat. She rummaged in her bag for a biro and a post-it. Scribbled “toothpaste”, “bread”. Pushed everything back into the bag. Went through the doors.

“Here we go”, she thought.

wind
// love
// poppy red
// bread
// tea
thank you, maria

slow

please bear with me while i'm taking it a bit slow, the first cold of the season has floored me. unfortunately one of the lie-down-in-bed varieties. till soon.

tapas with marion

i would never have found that small spanish restaurant without marion. safely tucked away in a side street, the front looked unassuming, and there were no customers in the first room. it was the tiny courtyard where everybody sat. it was hot, music was blaring from the kitchen, the dishes were marked on a board as long as my arm and my leg together. and my, were they good. (see those wine glasses. i want some.)

so here's to the lady, whose birthday it is today - happy, happy, marion!

there

there was a house off the main road, off the next one after, and down a dirt track, where we stayed. it was hot and i can still hear the cigales singing.

the season of rain

it's here again. the season of rain.

today, we are having mayoral elections in berlin, so i'll be donning my hideous rain cape soon, cycling to the polling station, then onto the museum bookshop for my sunday shift.

i'm starting to crave cakes, pears, lambs lettuce, walnuts, mushrooms. what's your favourite seasonal dish? any cake recipes? or savoury treats?

(these images were taken on a ferry ride - there's a post about berlin ferries over on mostly berlin. with the very same pictures, something i rarely do. i had to, this time...)

lines

i'd like to say thank you for all your feedback. not only does it make me happy to hear from you, it is also so very helpful. i always tend to think that everybody else knows exactly what they are doing, that everybody else has a clear, distinct style, found their way, while i'm finding it often excruciating to be all over the place. rather like circling an unknown point-of-having-arrived, and constantly being somewhere along the wide periphery of that circle. since i feel i'm so far from that certain point, the circumference is great and the individual spots i'm checking in from lie wide apart. it seems so random.

still, on that journey, i'm learning a lot, and you often keep me going. so thank you.

this morning, i have some lines from the corbusier house in marseille for you.

morning

waking up at the hotel corbusier on a summer's day.