Photography
You walk along friedrichstrasse and from one end to the other you experience several diverse and often incompatible worlds. And it isn't a smooth transition either. You have the delapidating building and right next to it is the 4-star hotel with its imposing facade coming out of the imposing 20s of the industrial and construction grandiosity. Right next to the baroque shop full of a mixture of kitch and tasteless perversions.
I spend the weekend in Berlin. It was wonderful - the weather was fantastic (perhaps does not fit the classical definition of August summer since it was only in the low 20-s), people were out in the streets, clouds were trickling from one side of the horizon to the other (casting the dramatic shadow and the occasional contrast-lowering). I did sleep in on Saturday and I missed the golden light but in some areas of Berlin, the light gets reflected from all possible corders creating a caleidoscope of light, refracted in every window and every alley. It wasn't until late in the evening when I reviewed my pictures that I found out a pattern (pictures not fitting the pattern will also trickle in the blog this week).
What I hadn't realized is that I've been taking pictures of couples everywhere. And it wasn't until I send a few select pictures to a special someone that I realized the emerging pattern. Was this pattern guided by an inner desire to be sharing the exact moments those couples were going through with the special someone I shared the pictures with? Do the objects of our photographic views emerge only because we are actively looking for them? I thought to myself what happened to documentation of the unseen, unobtrusive, uninterfered. Where did objectivity in photography go?
Berlin is a romantic location. The cafes that welcome couples. The street musicians who, as if hired by a film producers, fill the air with an operetic mood. The colours which, as if sucked up from the view, are soaked up in the viewed as if she's a painter.
The couples are oblivious to the street photographer who, like a voyaeur, scoops every bit of privacy into his pixels.
It is not a first time that I am climbing Musala. But it is a first to take the path from Belmeken dam - a 25 km trek on a mostly even terrain with the last 5 km or so with ups and downs on the rocky ground. The bones were crackling, the ground was soft, the sun was rough, the wind was deceitful. You smile together with everyone around, marvelling at the way the water makes its way through the ground, the way the pine trees feed you their green pine cones without protest. You are standing on that edge and hoping that you don't slip; and yet, you come closer to have your breath taken away by the view. You walk into the clouds as if they are a fluffy ball of pink candy cotton. And it melts under your feet just like the real cotton.
In the words of the Pinkspots, "there is going to be too much testosterone on the stage anyways" with the Argentinian group Rosario Smowing which is why their usual accompaniment wasn't there. And true it all was. The brief interlude to the passion was a gentle, cucumber-in-water subtlety. It was meant almost as a lullaby, to create a contrasting effect to the Argentinian blood. How could they have competed? They couldn't have - which is why they went for the opposite - the one that cannot be compared. And it worked - the moment, the two bands came together, the dialogue began - a dialogue across languages, across musical styles, across sound levels and decibels. And it was then that you realized that is not your usual concert. When the audience started conversing with the signers in Spanish, when the singers welcome the seated audience to reposition and dance - and how couldn't they when their feet were already involuntarily moving in the rhythm of the swing. They give each other boost through solos that glamorously focus the attention on the improvisational capacity of the musically inclined - because they are in their moment, their world. For them, the audience is part of the musical instrument, the instrument is their voice, their colleagues are the admirers and admired. This was a concert that reversed the roles of the audience and the performers - because the audience was singing along, and because the performers were doing it for themselves. And this is when I get the goose-bumps - when the connection gets established on the crossroad between the roles - when the juncture is crossed as if jumping on the next train platform to the train moving in opposite diction. Hop on!
It is said to be the biggest (i.e. longest at 12 km) march of shooters in Germany (anywhere), it still leaves me wondering about it - where are the shooters? But it is a colorful parade of sorts with tons of micro-groups each representing their historic heritage. I observe the groups, trying to guess the participants' age and their relation. Most are old, some are children. None are there in between (apart from the occasional one who appears to be a biological copy of one of the older ones). What is the purpose of this entertainment? Sorry - not the "purpose" (which is entertainment to the masses) but the "function" (and that's since 1955). As a photographer, one simply needs to look at it as a display of mastery - the Schützenkönig beats the rest but they are all part of the justification of this gathering. More pictures HERE.
