I have finally gotten my recent Berlin film developed and scanned. The pictures came out well, and there's a lot to work with. Primarily, I am interested in two or three images to round out the portfolio I am working on: New York, Amsterdam, Berlin.
The Jewish Museum, Berlin (4x5 film) One of the images has to be this one of the Jewish Museum. Having visited the museum before I had a sense of what I wanted to do, which was to show the relationship between the museum building and the adjacent low income housing projects. The area was virtually obliterated during World War II, and has been rebuilt in a hodge podge manner without any sense of coherence. Libeskind's museum building, an abstracted Star of David, appears as a jagged thunderbolt in the midst of this landscape.
From the ground it is difficult to visually connect the museum structure to the housing projects, but it's possible to do so tangentially, showing a piece of the building or a recognizable element of the museum garden. As I wrote before, it is supremely ironic that the residents surrounding the Jewish Museum are largely Muslim immigrants, and evidence of that can be seen in the numerous satellite dishes afixed to the residential buildings.
The day was extremely unsettled with squalls sweeping across the sky. When one particularly fierce looking storm moved in I dashed over to a postion I had scoped out earlier and took a series of pictures with the 4x5 camera.
Jewish Museum garden and nearby housing projects (4x5 film) Later, I made a photograph looking south toward the apartment towers with the the Garden of Exile and Emigration (the concrete pillars with willows emerging from within) seen in the foreground. This, too, is a successful photograph, but has less drama and mystery. I like the relationship between the concrete structures of the garden and the tower blocks behind.
On Saturday, drove with friends Art and Eve to Ridgefield, Connecticut to see an exhibition by the German painter Anselm Kiefer who has created a huge multi-paneled piece inspired by the Russian poet Velimir Chlebnikov (1885-1922), one the founders of Russian futurism, the modernist art movement. To quote from the exhibit brochure: "He wrote poems and pamphlets that, through complex mathematical formulae, chart the ebb and flow of conflicts East and West, the creation of global communications systems, and the supposed existence of climactic naval battles every 317 years."
A peek inside -- photography not allowed The thirty canvases have lead boats and submarines wired to their surfaces along with various bits and pieces of cloth tape, straw, and dead sunflowers. Kiefer designed the shed-like building to house the paintings, and the whole thing was transported from Germany to the garden of the Alddrich. The piece is actually on loan from an anonymous owner and will only be viewable until October 1. Why anyone would acquire such a gargantuan--not to mention important--piece for their personal enjoyment is beyond me.
Nuremberg, Anselm Kiefer, 1980 Kiefer's work has interested me for a long time. Back in the '80s as I was beginning to photograph the Iron Curtain border, I saw Kiefer's landscape oriented paintings at his gallery in New York. I then found these same haunted landscapes traveling across central Europe. I even wrote a song (mp3 file) based on the title of a series of Russian futurist drawings by Krutikov called Cities on the Aerial Paths of Communication, which was about the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of utopian idealism. I find myself attracted to the large themes that Kiefer grapples with so obsessively, though I pursue a less mythological approach.
Oebisfelde, Germany -- the Iron Curtain, 1987 (4x5 film) Grace Glueck of the New York Times writes of Kiefer: "he confronts the realization that civilization is still not a comfortable distance from chaos and may never be."
Since I left Amsterdam I've been been dealing with necessary business stuff, and continuing to work on my portfolio. I picked up the film shot in Berlin, and will post some of the images in the coming days.
On Friday I went up to Connecticut to visit friends Art Presson and Eve Kessler. I've know them both since the days when I worked at ICP (International Center of Photography) in the early '80s. They have an outstanding collection of photography that I am pleased to be a part of. The prints hang all over their house in "salon style," not always well-lit, but interesting for the unexpected juxtapositions of images. Most of the collection is comprised of black and white prints of modest size. Some of the images are well-known classics--like this one.
Kessler/Presson collection with Albino Sword Swallower by Diane Arbus
Brendan, my son, in front of the Silodam, our apartment building in Amsterdam
Back to New York with my film from Berlin and the scans I've been working on for the past several weeks. These I will be printing for my portfolio. Had a brief visit from my sister, Cathy Rose, who was on her way to a two-week literary workshop in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In Amsterdam all eyes are on World Cup soccer--my Berlin pictures will, inescapably, include evidence of Germany's hosting of the event. But I am happy to be heading back in the States in time to catch most of the NBA finals. I wonder if the Germans will be able to distract themselves from soccer long enough to see their countryman Dirk Nowitski lead the Dallas Mavericks to a possible title.
On a darker note, the Times of London ran a story today about how the site of Hitler's bunker adjacent to the Holocaust memorial and Potsdamer Platz has been identified for the first time with a sign in German and English. The reason given for its previous anonymity has always been the fear that it might become a right wing pilgrimage place. I have always felt that history must be acknowledged rather than covered up. Visitors to Berlin come looking for the past whether it be traces of the Wall or vestiges of the Nazi era. The city's willingness to finally acknowledge the bunker's location is further evidence of Germany's confidence in itself as it moves into the future.
Amsterdam, cruise ship on the way to the North Sea Flew back to Amsterdam. My thoughts now turn to the next trip to New York. Develop film from Berlin and scan last batch of Lower East Side pictures. Waiting patiently for architectural photography commissions to come through.
My last day shooting in Berlin, the weather was tumultuous with dark clouds sweeping across the sky, sudden showers and gusts of wind. It 's the kind of day that can drive you crazy trying to manage the view camera and keep your wits about you. But it can also lead to moments of visual drama. Fortunately, Anamarie, my friend from New York--living in Berlin for many years--came along for moral support and help with my equipment.
We began, not by shooting, but by visiting several galleries on the Zimmerstrasse near Checkpoint Charlie, where the Wall used to run down the middle of the street. The building we went into was in East Berlin in those days. We stopped in Galerie Nordenhake and saw photographs by Esko Mannikko from Finland, someone I'd never heard of. The images were close-ups of horses and farm animals lit sharply with flash and printed in fairly contrasty saturated color. A number of the images focused on eyes, sometimes closed, sometimes open. At first glance I thought the images relied too much on the gimmick of tight cropping, but as I rounded the gallery I began to warm to them, and concluded that there was something deeply felt about the images. At the gallery desk I leafed through selections of the photographer's other work, and found them equally compelling. Will watch for his work in the future.
On the outside of the gallery building, words were printed on a blank wall, one of many such surfaces exposed by the bombing of World War II. The words, in German, were quotes from a homeless man talking about his life situation. The show continued inside where there were videos of various homeless men accompanied by similarly printed quotes. The work was well-done, but I've always been wary of this kind of aestheticizing by artists, however admirable the intention.
Milovan Markovic - Homeless Berlin 2006, Zimmerstrasse near Checkpoint Charlie
Most of the afternoon was spent photographing the Jewish Museum, the famous Daniel Libeskind building on Lindenstrasse. Up to this point I had never attempted to photograph the museum largely because it was not directly along the path of the Wall. But having finished the Lost Border book, I no longer felt constrained by previous limitations. The museum, of course, has been photographed by any number of serious architectural photographers and photo-journalists, so it was not my intention to add to that body of work.
When I first visited the museum the present exhibition had not yet been installed. The empty interior spaces, employing allegory and geometric abstraction, presented Jewish history as a harrowing experience . As pure structure, the museum functioned to a great degree as a Holocaust memorial. The exhibition, however, is a historical overview of Jewish life in Germany and attempts to show the richness of Jewish culture, not just its tragic aspects. Unfortunately, for me, the exhibition is at odds with the architecture of the building, and neither comes off very well. Libeskind's echoing emptiness is stuffed with bric-a-brac. And the exhibit itself would have been better off displayed in conventional rectangular rooms.
But outside, the museum's zig-zagging electricity remains as strong as ever, though its severity is somewhat softened by the lushness of the garden surrounding it, especially in late May. Most pictures of the museum don't show the fact that it is located in a largely low income neighborhood of Kreuzberg. High rise towers with balconies festooned with satellite dishes indicate the presence of immigrants. The great irony of the Jewish Museum's location is that it sits in the midst of a largely Muslim neighborhood.
Jewish Museum, Berlin with nearby low income apartment tower In the landscape surrounding the museum, the cuttout lines and slashes of the facade are delineated on the ground as well. Steel rails vector away from the building. Except for a fenced section in the rear that presumably needed to be protected, the landscape appears borderless, filtering out into the neighboring parkland. I did several photographs that attempt to show this integration of landscaping, though I doubt that any will be wholly successful. Other pictures I made illustrate the closeness of the adjacent housing projects. Go here for Google satellite view of the Jewish Museum.
From there I headed back toward Checkpoint Charlie, taking pictures of interesting urban layering along the way. I did two pictures that include one of my favorite modern buildings in Berlin. The GSW building by Sauerbruch Hutton. At Checkpoint Charlie I had hoped to get a photograph of the crazy kitsch that now serves as historical monument to one of the most important and sensitive spots of the Cold War. The early '60s checkpoint shed has been recreated complete with protective sandbags, and actors in American and Russian uniforms stamp tourists' passports with phony East German day visas. But the street was in shadow, so I used my last sheet of film elsewhere. Go here for real checkpoint shed in 1987.
Once again I drove to Potsdamer Platz to begin the day. Not wanting to drive the car into Berlin Mitte where parking is difficult, I took the S-Bahn two stops to the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof. Before 1989 this was the most common way to enter East Berlin as a visitor. The other, more famous crossing, was Checkpoint Charlie. Friedrichstrasse was also the way out of East Berlin, which was generally impossible for people living behind the Iron Curtain. Retirees, and others with some special dispensation made it across, however. The glass customs hall next to the station was the scene of emotional farewells as friends and relatives returned to the west, hence it's nickname, Traenenpalast, or palace of tears. Today, the building is preserved in somewhat shabby condition as a historic site, and it is currently being used as a music venue. I took several photographs of the building and surrounding area.
Traenenpalast (Palace of Tears) From there I walked east below the elevated train viaduct stopping to make a photo or two, grabbing a currywurst at a makeshift beer garden across the street from the Pergamon Museum, and eventually reaching Unter den Linden in front of Schinkel's Altes Museum, the Berliner Dom, and the partially demolished Palast der Republik across the street. I walked onto the Schlossplatz, the former site of the earlier Baroque palace, which was torn down after the war by the East Germans. The parade ground thus created was called Marx-Engels Platz and was primarily used as a parking lot for communist party functionaries. Across the Spree, Schinkel's Bauakademie is being recronstructed--one corner of the building is complete--and the rest of the building's volume is wrapped in a printed facsimile of the facade. I was quite taken by the trompe l'oeil effect. It was a cloudy day, but the false facade retained a permanently sunny aspect.
Bauakademie, reconstruction based on design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel
Turning back to the Palast der Republik, I did two photographs showing the stripped frame of the building and an outdoor exhibition on the history of the site. Both the Prussian era Schloss and the Bauakademie survived the war--with damage--but could have been restored. The German Democratic Republic, short of money, and ideologically charged with cleansing the past, tore the historic structures down. Since the fall of communism, both buildings have been the subject of intense debates within the architectural community and among the public at large. The German parliament has voted to rebuild the pre-war Schloss, or at least some version of it.
Go here for an earlier photograph of the Palast der Republik.
