unrelated

two favourites from france - unrelated. one taken in avignon, the other one on the terrace in st. rémy.

yesterday i had a funny day, where nothing worked out as planned. as if the wiring of that day was somehow wrong. today, i'm feeling a little under the weather: a stiff neck, pressure on my ears, light-headed. hope it's passing.

p.s.: feeling much better today, thanks for your kind words!

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.

a very good day

one sunny day i drove to avignon to see the cy twombly show at the collection lambert and to meet mary. what a perfect day it was. i so enjoyed the exhibition, i think we needed something like three or four hours to see it, because we stopped everywhere, getting lost in some conversation. i remember we wondered how very different sol lewitt's work and his personal space at home were - would you have guessed a master of conceptual, highly cerebral art would have a study full of memorabilia and an amazing moodboard, and would take serial pictures of his crockery? and we did have such a good time looking at lartigue's stereoscopic photographs. what a cheek he was.

cy twombly's photographs were quite wonderful. i loved the early black and white images he took of the shared studio space with rauschenberg in new york, but his later polaroids were quietly poetic, altogether of a different kind.

very kindly, mary gave me a roll of kodak elite chrome, on which these frames were taken. and she introduced me to fondant au chocolat, which we had in the courtyard, after having successfully missed lunch service due to our chatting away. it was a revelation. thanks mary!

(the graphics on the wall are by douglas gordon. marion went as well, on another day.)

the pool

let's go to the pool, shall we? (back in berlin, outside my window people are walking past in woolly hats, which is worrying. in my mind, though, i can go back to the pool side whenever i want.)

p.s.: first two frames colour negative film, all others taken on slide.

morning

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

thinking

since last november life was moving so fast it felt suffocating. the scales were just tipping far too much. not in the way of having to work the odd extra hour, but in the sense of an all-encompassing state of working, where there was no time to even leave the house when the sun was - so rarely - shining, or to see a friend for a chat. occasionally there were precious hour-long breaks to meet someone, or chances to cycle to the garden, but even that was mostly impossible by the time june and july came around.

being away from it all for two weeks, staying in the south of france, two long weeks of hot summer days, days that were finally entirely unplanned and truly free, gave me time to think.

i don't want a life that feels like a race i can't win. time is a precious gift, not a string of numbered days. i will make space for shared hours, shared thoughts and ideas. because as much as i love my work, living and creating, and caring and be cared about, are infinitely closer to my heart. first things first.

going for a stroll

going for a stroll in marseille. what a fascinating city. and i've only seen a tiny fraction of it in 1 1/2 short days.

what you can't see is how hot it was. we simply had to go inside the shops because they were air-conditioned, you see. no other reason, of course.

of friends and places

it may not be the best way of travelling to marseille, on a very hot day in august on just 3 and 1/2 hours of sleep. but then there was marion, who met me at the station and took me to la caravelle for lunch. she is the best city guide, and it was so good seeing her again. the food was delicious - even though i couldn't eat the snails - the tender fish and soft boiled egg with new potatoes, haricots verts and aioli were wonderful. afterwards we went to the corbusier house, but that's another story...

p.s.: when looking at the old port, i can't get this reference out of my head. give me seventies movies any day.

de retour

je suis de retour, mes amis, i'm back home again. i'm full of memories and sunshine, and feel incrediby energised.

more images to follow. how have you been?

p.s.: you may have noticed: doing a marion in the second frame.

happy holidays

1. Untitled, 2. Let's talk about cheese I, 3. Flea market find, 4. ., 5. 13_resize, 6. Three, 7. Untitled, 8. Untitled, 9. the good stuff

happy holidays, friends!

the images in this mosaic are not mine, but the work of some stunning photographers on flickr. click on the links underneath the mosaic to see their photo streams. be inspired!

morning!

i was wondering why i am feeling a bit funny and realised i had forgotten to have breakfast. (i bet this never happens to jen, who always records her morning meals so beautifully.) but i am a bit like that. there seem to be so many things going on in my mind lately that there just isn't enough room for everything. i remember when i was ten or eleven, i once when to school without my schoolbag. i had to walk 15 minutes to get to the schoolbus stop, then a 45 minute ride to school and i still only noticed when the teacher asked us to take out our books. little miss head in the clouds.

anyway, these are some more pictures from my weekend at the sea. i love that old garden. and the weather was so beautiful that we had breakfast out on the terrace every morning. bliss.

have a good day!

a bit of beach

i'm a bit tired tonight, so there'll be just a bit of beach for you with not much writing to illuminate it all. pictures taken last weekend at heringsdorf on usedom, on the german baltic coast. lovely it was.

let me just say i really enjoyed that there were so many real people on the beach. none of that size zero nonsense.

first steps

finally got my act together and set up a flickr account. it will probably take a while until i get my head around it properly, but it's a start. (i may just start bugging you with questions...) would love to see you there! 

these pictures were taken on a market, on a hot summer's day in saint-martin-de-craux, not far from arles. i so miss the sun-drenched flavours of the south.

p.s.: thank you so much for all your feed-back so far on my camera question! some of you dropped me a comment, some of you sent me an email. thank you, thank you for your thoughts and ideas, this is such a big help. i'm still happy to hear what you are thinking, so leave me a comment if you like (i do read english, french, dutch and german, so any of these languages is fine ;))!

france: the place

when we arrived in france, we had taken the nighttrain from venice (meaning we didn't get much sleep). quite an adventure, though. having picked up the car at nîmes station and driven down to arles, we did some quick food shopping on the market and finally arrived at the mas, where we would be be spending a whole week. such a beautiful place. the building from the 16th century had been restored by our host and her partner, a stone mason. we loved the room, the summer kitchen, the pergola, the pool, the sound of the crickets. wish i could go back this minute!

p.s.: i've just been looking into photo courses, i'd love to take one this autumn and there are some interesting classes. exciting!

p.p.s.: thanks for all your kind comments. i'm sorry i sounded so sad in my last post. feeling much better now. had a wonderful sunday.