Whodunit
PAPILLON TANZ
Sprayed Wall
The Ishtar Gate
Pergamonmuseum, Berlin For an hellenophil king in Munich, statues from a small temple on an Aegean island were robbed and shipped to Munich, where they found a new home in a museum. I found this pretty impressive, but then, Munich is only a province capital, and the Prussian rulers got somewhat bigger pieces of booty…
Sound of the Forest
Eagle from Above
Reichstag Rooftop
The Pregnant Oyster
Rinsing
Oversized Graffiti
New Gallery: East Side Gallery Berlin
Here is an eclectic collection of graffiti on the East Side Gallery. In this case photography is more craftmanship than anything else.
Window Facade
No Conversation here
Winterized
Potsdam Lantern Holder
So this, as all the Berlin photographs (and the Florence ones before, and many others) is now filed in the “Common Places” category. Why? Of course I am referring to Stephen Shore’s “Uncommon Places” here, a topic and genre not regarded as art before the ground breaking work of Shore and some of his contemporaries.…
Coventry Cross of Nails
Prussia’s Glory
Prussia’s glory barely survived in this very place. Of course it was not the direct fault of this second German empire, but switches were set already at this time that led to the catastrophies in the early 20th century. Here we see the rulership in imagined union with the celestial forces, where they drew the…
They’re coming!
The East Side gallery is by far the largest accumulation of graffiti I’ve ever seen, and I’ve certainly taken more than one picture of those, but in hindsight I’ve somewhat mixed feelings. For one, they were done not on commission but at least on invitation, which takes away quite a bit from the anarchic and…
The Smoker
Smoking is generally on decline in Germany, and e-cigarettes are biting away from the rest of the cake. Of course this makes the big four tobacco companies unhappy, but for the average health of the citizens it certainly is good news. However there’s a not so small group of the ‘young and cool’, who still…
Maze à la Lafayette
Galeries Lafayette, Berlin For a small-town dweller, luxury malls like the Lafayette in Berlin of course provide nearly endless food for the camera – and for thinking along the lines: Will that ever pay off? Are there enough people willing to pay a premium just to shop in such an artificial environment, where the goods…
As cool as Fashion
Bike and Sumach
OBEY goes Berlin
Soul Explosion
Architecture of Power
Modern architecture can be quite attractive, and I found these clear lines and shapes more appealing then a historicising reconstruction of, say, the Berlin “Stadtschloß”. Those old times are gone for good, and as we don’t want to re-live the dark sides, we shouldn’t try to re-erect old buildings that always had a specific meaning…