geometry (#3)
geometry © Verena Fischer 2013
There is one way to lure my man out of the house: Mention a bookshop. Yesterday it definitely did the trick, especially after seeing that the bookshop was relatively close to Alexanderplatz. Berlin sights are another good lure. On the way to the shop we passed under the TV tower and the structure of the building at the base added a nice geometric shape to the picture. It was taken with my Canon EOS 450D and my new Canon EF 35mm f/2.0.
The bookshop we went to was König Buchhandlung, which is an art bookstore. It’s really quite big and has also a great selection of philosophy books. I like that there were more books in it than I was willing to investigate. This means there is more to find during a second or third trip. We only bought a few small philosophy related books, but it was definitely worth the journey. We will definitely come back there.
I’m really enjoying my new lens by the way. I already got a 50mm f/1.4 prime lens last year, which produces great bokeh and is very fast. However, that one is not exactly the best lens for all situations, because of the crop factor of my camera. It always feels as if you have to go very far away to get the picture into the frame. It’s brilliant for low light situations and portraits though. The new one approximates a 55mm focal length frame, which is great for an all purpose prime lens.
The new lens will also come in handy if I buy myself a used analog EOS, an idea I’ve been toying with as well. You can get them very cheaply nowadays and now I already have 2 fitting prime lenses. Wouldn’t cost more than 50 quid and I’d already have a good setup. I already have an analog camera, a 55 year old Zorki, and I love it, but it’s hard to find lenses for it, especially wide angle ones. This year I want to explore analog photography, so a bit more flexibility might be nice. This is something to be thinking about in spring though. It’s too cold and uncomfortable outside to be mucking around with film!
day 234: day of the triffids
day of the triffids © Verena Fischer 2012
When I noticed that the flower seemed to be eating the little figurine, or whatever you could call it, I immediately had to think of Day of the Triffids. It’s one of my favourite post-apocalyptic books and I really enjoyed the sinister BBC TV production from the 80s as well. If you don’t know it, do check it out. I guess this picture also explains why I don’t really get along with plants so well. They are just scary!
day 182: the good stuff
the good stuff © Verena Fischer 2012
day 161: inspiration
inspiration © Verena Fischer 2012
The main objective of going to my dad’s place was actually to get my sofa to Berlin. Oh surprise, surprise, in the end it didn’t fit into the car! It’s actually not so surprising since even when disassembled the parts are still quite big. If we could do a few trips, it would probably work, but by then we would have paid for a new sofa already with the expensive petrol prices. So, instead we just packed the car full with my books, additionally to the stereo and other odds and ends that we were taking anyway. It’s great since I haven’t had my stuff with me for the last few years and now I’m discovering that I have lots of very nice books, like the one above. There is still lots of stuff here, but it’s definitely a start.
day 157: The God of Small Things
The God of Small Things © Verena Fischer 2012
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is one of those books that sneaks up on you. First I wasn’t sure what to think, then I put it away and read something else, because I just wasn’t so convinced. However, in the end I picked it up again and started where I left off. Although I had forgotten a few things over the months, it read on lightly, as if something latched onto you secretly and pulled you in. Now after finishing the book I know that I made a mistake in putting it away for a few months, since it just created a gap in the middle that took away part of the atmosphere of getting dragged in. Sometimes it’s important to just carry on whether you’re sure or not.
It’s a story with a dense atmosphere and only by the end you really get what was going on throughout. There is a sense of dread lingering as well. One that grips you ever more tightly once you realise how brutal the story really is, although it’s beautifully told. I can only recommend that you guys read it.
day 125: lost in translation
lost in translation © Verena Fischer 2011
These days I haven’t had much time to dance tango. It was all packing, moving out, moving in, buying and assembling furniture, the usual when you’re moving. My mum came to help us move the stuff from one place to the other and we also had to make sure that the builders that were still in the flat on Wednesday and Thursday actually did their job properly. They were slow, sloppy and at one point even wanted to saw into one of the kitchen cupboards. You basically had to stand right next to them and watch or else you’d end up with 3 different types of door handles in one room if they didn’t forget to put the door in altogether. When they gave me one of the mailboxes they broke 2 more in the process. And just as I was glad they were done we realised that one of the thermostats is broken. More builders, oh dear …
The picture shows an academic book about tango which I’m reading at the moment. There is this myth that you can’t write about a dance, because something gets lost in the process. However, I think such books can still help in understanding what’s going on when we dance.
day 106: circle of candles
circle of candles © Verena Fischer
Yesterday I ventured out of the house with a plan. I wanted to do something that I used to do when I was a student in Düsseldorf. Every now and then I would go to my favourite bookshop, the Sternverlag, buy a book and sit with it in the next café reading the first 20-50 pages sipping a coffee. That bookshop is just fantastic, it’s really big and where ever you wander you will find a book worth picking up, even in the self-help section. Sure enough, I still haven’t located a comparable bookshop in Berlin and, no, I (sadly) don’t drink coffee anymore, but there is a bookshop not so far from here across from the court house on Turmstraße. And it has a café right next to it.
When I entered the shop I wasn’t sure whether I would find something worth getting, since I don’t like reading books in translation unless I don’t speak the language and contemporary German literature doesn’t really peak my interest. Still, I gave it my best shot, browsed through the big art section and even looked at the little yellow Reclam paperbacks that every German kid knows from school reading. Even when I still went to school I used to pick up a play or a short novella for a few euros thanks to these cheap Reclam paperbacks. I skipped the Fantasy and Science Fiction shelf and unexpectedly found myself in the poetry corner. And there, right in front of me on eye level there was my new book: Mascha Kaléko “Die paar leuchtenden Jahre”.
Back when I left for England a good friend of mine gave me a Mascha Kaléko book to pass the time on lonely evenings in exile. And quite a few evenings I didn’t spend among those “weird Brits” but with some of these German exile verses in bed. There it was, the longing for a long lost home that is for the most part only a longing for lost years (an approximate translation of one of the verses from memory, actually). And back then I didn’t quite understand yet what it means to feel like an outsider in a place that you still somehow consider to be your home. That only came later. Nowadays, as much as I sometimes wish that I could go back, I know that I can’t pick up my old life where I left it. Sometimes you have to leave to be able to come back. And sometimes you can never come back at all.
With my new Kaléko book I sat in the café next door and read the first 50 pages while sipping a fresh mint tea with brown sugar. Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing wrong over the last few months: Instead of just picking up my old habits in a new city, I’ve been trying to “get a plan” of what to do next. Maybe not the way to go.
On the way back home I ran into a protest against domestic violence in front of the Rathaus Tiergarten, i.e. the city hall of the area. Part of it was this circle of candles which these two kids obviously enjoyed very much. I was lucky to catch the scene when it was illuminated by the headlights of a car. The illumination gave the shadows of the candles a somewhat surreal feel.
day 57: there is a yeti in my bed
there is a yeti in my bed © Verena Fischer 2011
I have mentioned my hot water yeti a few days ago and here you can see him in action. He actually stayed warm for the entire evening and I was glad to have him since it’s become quite cold here over the last few days.
Other than that we planned to see the latest Lars von Trier movie last night, but then stayed in after all since the cold wasn’t really agreeing with me. Instead we watched The unbearable lightness of being with Juliette Binoche. I enjoyed it a lot, although I don’t quite understand why they never just let happy couples be. In the end they always have to die, as if happiness is some kind of unachievable notion that is only possible for a few moments. And with that I don’t mean to give it just a happy end, after all they are just as fake. The first kiss marks this happy ending, as if all of what comes after is all so easy and well-known. And they lived happily ever after. In real life the problems before the first kiss are usually smaller than those that follow it. That’s actually what I liked about The unbearable lightness of being. Being is not so light after all and they have many problems throughout. The first kiss is not the conclusion, but only the beginning. In the end they find a solution though and happiness with it.
Well, if you think about it, there is no way of letting them live then, since prolonged happiness seems so unrealistic to us.. As teenagers we believe in it, but later we become bitter and compare our own small lives to the stories in the movies or to what we wanted for ourselves, once upon a time. It results either in finding these films unrealistic or our own lives too mediocre. Welcome midlife crisis. Happiness only belongs to picture books and to our dreams that real life is supposed to shatter in the end, because we all have to do our part, right? I say, let them live every once in a while.
And no, nobody hacked my blog, it’s still me writing, although these almost optimistic notions are certainly out of character for me. I must be ill or something …
day 56: in a forgotten corner
in a forgotten corner © Verena Fischer 2011
Just when I was about to go out to my driving lesson the sky turned black and it started to rain heavily. I decided against taking the bike in that weather and walked instead with my flimsy black umbrella with the white dots. It’s a bit broken, but it does it’s job as long as it’s not raining too heavily. So yesterday it wasn’t doing it’s job really, merely decoration. It hadn’t rained in quite a while so I forgot that the shoes I normally wear for driving are not quite water proof. I was standing at a crossing when the water seeped in. The legs of my jeans were soaked full of water, my toes were damp and there were big puddles of water that were hard to avoid which led to more water in my shoes. Well, in the end you just have to bite the bullet and accept that you’re not going to stay dry. After all, we’re not going to melt, since we’re not made out of sugar. Well, apart from Ezequiel that is.
My driving instructor pointed out that the Christmas decorations are already up in some shops. I said that the Christmas sweets are already in stock too and he said “Oh, that’s normal, they have them from September nowadays”. Since we don’t really have Halloween in Germany apart from on TV, it’s not surprising that they sell Marzipan, Lebkuchen and Dominosteine so early. The last few years Christmas also involved mince pies from England and last Christmas there was also turrón from Spain. Christmas is different in the places where I have lived. However, for the celebrations I normally end up in my hometown together with my family.
Well, apart from that one time when I was stranded in Brighton due to bad health. Most of my friends had gone home and I was pretty much alone. Then the boiler broke and I was left without heating at -7°C, the same day when my cash card stopped working too. That was one annoying start into a new year I tell you!
This year I might spend Christmas in Argentina. This will mean that instead of brisk cold weather and snow there will be summer and beach weather! For me it seems unbelievable that Ezequiel says Christmas is the time for ice cream and summer holidays. How different it is for us with the long dark nights, the lights and the snow, although the latter usually only comes after Christmas. And then there is New Year with the fire crackers which involves getting cold and damp feet out on the icy pavement. If it’s gonna be summer for Christmas, it’s gonna be another crazy adventure. I like those, so I’m all up for it.
Yesterday’s picture was taken in a corner of the market hall down the street. I realised that there actually is a second hand bookshop in there which we will probably check out tomorrow. Strange that I have only noticed it now, although somewhat understandable since it’s in a strange corner one probably doesn’t stumble upon by chance.
day 52: embracing darkness
embracing darkness © Verena Fischer 2011
Yesterday I showed Ezequiel the turbine factories that are in the neighbourhood. Nice old brick stone factory buildings that also have architectural value. If you look at many contemporary factory buildings this is really not the case nowadays. It soon also became dark since again we only went after dusk was already setting in. The only thing you can do in such a situation is to try to get your camera to still pick up some of the nuances. I have been trying to capture street reflections in low light for a while, but with the wrong lens so that I just couldn’t get a wide enough aperture. This time I had my 18-55mm lens which has a widest aperture of 3.5 at 18mm. With this I finally managed to get the kind of picture I envisioned.
I also promised you a little review of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro which I’ve finished reading a few days ago. Let me just say that I found it really quite hard to write something about it without a little bit of a spoiler. I think I managed to keep it minimal though since I don’t go into any details about the plot:
The book is about the life of a young woman who remembers her childhood in a sort of boarding school together with her closest friends and her big love. What gives the story an interesting twist is that these are no ordinary children, but that they are clones who are reared to become organ donors for the rest of the population.
I first thought that the plot was a bit unbelievable since the kids themselves don’t really do anything about their situation and when they finally try to change it, they stay within the cosy constraints of the system. If you wait for an escape attempt, I can spoil it insofar as it won’t come. They stay, they do their part. After thinking about it for a while I realised though that in fact it’s more believable this way, because our times show the mark of general apathy. I’m not saying that there is no social unrest or that demonstrations against governments don’t happen, they just happen at a different scale than they used to happen, say, during the times of the great depression or during the high times of communism among the work forces. No, nowadays we don’t try to change the system, we move within its chessboard rules. We do our part in making a few lucky people rich claiming that we can’t change the system. If anyone objects against this common wisdom we shout communism and remind everyone how miserably that attempt at change failed. And after all, if we do our part and work for the lucky few we have security, food and shelter and can even afford our flatscreen TVs and shiny gadgets, our set amount of holiday and so on. Who are we to object to the good life?
Ishiguro just paints an extreme: People brought up to only live until they are old enough to be organ donors for the lucky rest. Well, we donate our precious life time, is that so different?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to say anything against leading the good life and being grateful for a secure job in economically difficult times. I only want to ask: Whose fault is this “crisis” anyway and why are we bailing them out? Is it really so important to keep a system afloat that makes a few rich people richer on the basis that the masses are full and happy as long as they can make the best of it? They watch X Factor and have a laugh with their friends and that’s ok. However, it’s exactly this kind of apathy that keeps things as they are. Who would lose from setting all debt to zero? Well, the banks want to tell you that you will lose, but they are also the ones who win from keeping the system as it is. I want to ask: Is this system really the best we can do?
In that sense Never Let Me Go is one of those dystopian novels that are not so far removed from the reality we live in. And it does its job well with a compelling story about friendship and love that leaves you feeling a bit unsettled, but it doesn’t throw any conclusions into your face. You have to get there yourself. If you don’t like asking the big questions you can also just ignore them and enjoy the book as a human story. It’s definitely a book worth reading.
day 48: still not loving police
still not loving police © Verena Fischer 2011
Yesterday Ezequiel wanted to go to a bookshop. He already ordered some books on amazon, but you know … it’s his addiction, he just likes books. And I like that he likes books, so I’m not objecting, although I actually have started to feel threatened in bookshops over the last few years. You just go in there and you feel the pressure of all the books screaming at you “Read me, read me”! I just start to feel stressed in bookshops now, because it’s all too clear that there is not enough time in a life to read all the good books in the world. What can you do? That’s just how it is.
We went to Kreuzberg where there is an English language bookshop. I’ve only been to Kreuzberg for tango before so I was pretty surprised when I realised that it’s actually a really nice area. Maybe a little too hip if you look too closely, but definitely nice. There is even an entire bookshop just dedicated to SciFi and Fantasy, I certainly find that appealing! In the same street there is also a crime bookshop too. Well, both indicators that it’s indeed too trendy around there … which is also reflected by the street art everywhere.
The English language bookshop is in Riemannstraße and it’s full of used books. Most of them are not exactly in good quality and the basement is full of shit science fiction. The person who seemed to be the owner of the shop was shuffling about in not so good health in between playing strategy games on the computer. Although she/he (a definite indefinite case) was helpful it was also obvious that she/he was not entirely bent on selling anything. Most books had a red mark in them saying “lending only” which stopped me from even considering them. After having a good look around we actually went out without buying anything shrugging a bit about the experience.
And yesterday’s picture can also give you an idea of what the street art in the area is like. It made me chuckle a bit, because it’s sort of provocative and not, both at the same time. Love is such a strong word after all.
day 46: architectural marvels
architectural marvels © Verena Fischer 2011
Originally we were thinking of going to the Pergamon museum yesterday. However, it didn’t seem as if the sudden warm weather was agreeing very well with me, so we just walked around Unter den Linden for a bit and then returned home.
In front of one of the buildings of the Humboldt University that is just across from the Staatsoper there is a little used book market very much like the one in front of the Mensa at the Düsseldorf university. When I still studied there I used to dread this used book market, because I always ended up spending way more money on books than I could actually spare. It’s not surprising then that Ezequiel and me both ended up buying books. However, he can regard himself lucky that he cannot speak the language, or else he would have bought many more books than he did. I tried to limit myself and only had a brief look at the GDR Science Fiction section. I hoped to find a nice old GDR edition of some soviet SciFi where I wouldn’t mind the translation into German. And indeed, I was lucky: I found Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem who is one of my favourite Science Fiction writers.
Everyone probably knows Solaris which is pretty amazing, although in my opinion it is not even his best book! Among the ones I read The Invincible is quite likely the most impressive:
Contact is lost to a starship when investigating a planet which at first sight seems like a pretty barren lifeless rock. They send another ship, i.e. The Invincible, to see what’s going on and they only encounter a very strange form of mechanical life that reminds of insects. By themselves they are not much of a threat, but they can self-organise into big swarms that show complex and dangerous behaviours. In the end the fight against them has to be given up. I remember enjoying it immensely!
I’ve also discovered with yesterday’s picture that if you zoom in on the TV tower here in Berlin you can see a quite cool example of futuristic soviet architecture. From down below it already looks impressive enough, but with this magnification it looks just great! A perfect picture to go with my new book.
day 45: deceptive appearances
deceptive appearances © Verena Fischer 2011
Yesterday we just had a quiet Sunday and didn’t do much. I was reading a little in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go which I will tell you more about when I’ll have finished it and we were also watching some films.
One of the films was The Remains Of the Day by James Ivory with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. It’s a strong story about the butler and the housekeeper in the household of Lord Darlington. It is acted incredibly well and Anthony Hopkins’ performance as the butler is very believable with the typical stiff upper lip. The relationships of the characters are bleak and distanced, and they just seem so odd to the observer. One wonders why the butler has such difficulties admitting his feelings towards the housekeeper, but then quickly the portrayal of Britishness explains it all. The film is based on another novel by Kazuo Ishiguro with the same title as the film. I haven’t read this other novel yet, but Never Let Me Go strikes me as very British too which might give an indication of what to expect from The Remains of the Day. I’m curious about it since Never Let Me Go shows this Britishness more in a contemporary setting. To come back to the film: It is very good. It might be a bit on the bleak side, but nevertheless it’s really worth watching. Already the wonderful acting is reason enough.
As a strong contrast we also watched Transformers: Dark of the Moon. It doesn’t even deserve much of a review since it’s just a waste of lifetime! The dialogues are among the worst I’ve ever seen and the female lead (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) is actually a model. The latter can explain why her acting consists mainly of an idiotic looking pout involving her unbelievably ridiculous fake lips. Whenever her lips appeared in a frame Ezequiel would start to laugh and I would jokingly tell him off for ‘ruining the romance’. I’ve seen children’s cartoons with better dialogues. The amazing thing is that they actually must have made an effort to make the film as bad. Even the most untalented script writer would have at least recognised how bad the dialogues really are! In any case: Don’t torture your poor brains with this non-sense. The special effects are really not worth that kind of pain.
Yesterday’s picture shows the strange fruit Rambutan. It’s like a bigger version of a lychee with more pronounced spikes. It also has a bit of a more pronounced taste which I quite enjoy.
day 40: odd
odd © Verena Fischer 2011
Right next to the Bahnhof Zoo which used to be the main station of West Berlin there is the Museum for Photography. Yesterday Ezequiel and me decided to go there after we saw that there was a bookshop for photography books in this museum. We both have a thing for books and buy too many of them. We also thought that maybe it could be inspiring to see a photography exhibition. What we didn’t know was that the museum at the moment only shows their collection of Helmut Newton photos.
We walked through the exhibition with a mounting sense of dread. Plasticky fake people in plasticky fake pretty situations. Everything seemed to be so upper class and rich. Most women had only a silly pouting face as their expression, all other faces seemed blank, without emotion. Should people look like this? The naked women in the pictures seemed like puppets, mannequins, overdone, harsh. Helmut Newton then reflects on this ironically it seems by taking similar pictures with actual mannequins and barbie dolls. His naked women are replaceable, fake and without a core. For a few minutes we watched a video of Newton working with Sigourney Weaver. He almost didn’t interact with his subject, only talked to his assistant in French and as the minutes passed Sigourney Weaver seemed to disappear, she was just someone following instructions, almost invisible.
The only picture that had some appeal was one of Nastassja Kinski (you can see the picture here). My guess is that her picture is more appealing because she was the only woman who smiled. This made her look more natural and expressive. I don’t think I saw a smile in any other picture in the exhibition.
After we watched a bit of an interview with Helmut Newton we left the exhibition, not knowing what to think of it. There were visually stunning pictures of obviously stunning women, but they all seemed dead and lifeless. Was it on purpose? Who knows? Was it ironic? Who knows?
We then went on into the bookshop, but for me it all felt too much, I just wanted to sit down, close my eyes and not even think for a while. We didn’t even buy a book in the end and I felt too tired to take pictures. Maybe it was this odd sense of feeling overwhelmed that got me to yesterday’s picture. I would like to tell you what’s going on in this shot, but honestly, I have no clue! These girls were just there outside the station in Jebensstraße. The girl on the right got ready to take a picture, the girl on the left was smoking a cigarette in the most bored way imaginable and the girl in the middle was doing something very mysterious that didn’t seem connected to the other girls’ actions. It was just plain odd.
day 36: distortion
distortion © Verena Fischer 2011
I think all the stress and sleepless nights of the last weeks and months are finally catching up with me. I’ve spent most of yesterday on my sofa, watching things, reading and relaxing. It made me realise how exhausted I really am. I’m glad that I can take some time off now and just take it easy for a while. Originally I wanted to go to tango last night, but then I felt that I couldn’t face cycling all the way there and back and dancing and dealing with people. I just wanted to stay on the sofa and stare blankly at a movie or series I’ve seen so many times that I don’t need my brain at all. Sometimes that’s necessary.
Overall I’ve probably overused my brain in the last few months, since I feel like mostly watching silly movies. At least I’ve found some mind-space to read some nice books. I just finished The Innocent by Ian McEwan and Letter to D by André Gorz. Although the former was slightly predictable in the plot the actual way of putting things in the end was just crazy. One chapter I read with the horrible feeling of not wanting to hear any of it, but then it was too gripping to not read it. It reminded me of reading Stephen King books where you’re torn between the horror of it all and the absolute necessity to carry on reading.
Letter to D is a short nice book, a declaration of love from Gorz to his terminally ill wife. Shortly after the book was published they committed suicide together because they could not imagine living without each other. Parts of the book make more sense if you know a thing or two about the intellectual history of France in the last century, but the main message is perfectly understandable without knowing any of the names mentioned. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and recommend it warmly.
“You’ve given me all of your life and all of you; I’d like to be able to give you all of me in the time we have left.” (André Gorz in Letter to D)
The Innocent however depends more on your personal preferences. If you don’t like to be confronted with the terrible abyss in which humans can pull you sometimes, then I recommend not to read it. However, if you don’t mind being surprised in the most awful way, then it’s worth picking up a copy, because it is exceptionally well written in my opinion.
“The imagination was even more brutal than life.” (Ian McEwan in The Innocent)
Yesterday’s picture is of a part of a postcard that I bought at the Bauhaus archive here in Berlin. I was playing with my macro converter and since I couldn’t quite get my idea to work I ended up with my two converters just lying on the postcard in weird angles. I quite like the outcome of this little experiment.
day 20: backyard discoveries
backyard discoveries © Verena Fischer 2011
When I was a teenager I once read a book by Wolfgang Hohlbein called Dreizehn, i.e. German for 13. It’s about a 13 year old girl (oh surprise …) who happens to find a door to another dimension and is stuck on the other side in a creepy house. The story is somehow connected to the Pied Piper of Hamelin and I only vaguely remember the whole story of the book. I do remember enjoying it very much though and I was listening to one of the old albums of Die Ärzte back then. It somehow fit very well to the mood of the book. The album had an awfully awesome picture of Bela B – their drummer – in the booklet which would just haunt me! Well, you know how teenagers are …
Yesterday’s picture was taken in a backyard just 2 blocks from here and it is a good example for the curious fact that in Berlin you just need to keep your eyes open and you’ll find something strange and interesting to take pictures of. You might have also noticed lots of brick buildings in my photos and that is because Berlin is just full of them. Especially in the backyards where the facades are in bad shape you can see that many buildings are built with brick stones even if they don’t look like it from the outside. Secretly maybe all of them are made from brick, you’ll never know without drilling a hole!
The photo just reminded me of the Hohlbein book since there is this strange gateway painted onto the facade of the building. I immediately remembered Bela B and the photo in the booklet, so I put on this album called Im Schatten der Ärzte to remember better how it felt like back then. It’s strange how easily we become obsessed with something as teenagers. And shortly after we lose interest and forget completely that we ever were this taken. Then one day looking at a picture or listening to some music we are catapulted back into our past and get a hint of what it must have been like back then.
And one day I will look at a picture or listen to some music that will remind me of how it was to wander through the backyards of Berlin to take photos.
day 7: curiosity killed the cat
curiosity killed the cat © Verena Fischer
Today, sunshine, 26°C and what did I do? I sat inside, writing my MSc dissertation. Well, I have to admit that I made some very good progress, but it still seemed like such a waste considering that the summer this year didn’t even deserve that name! And just when I finally wanted to go outside to take some pictures Ezequiel comes online on skype. In the end I rushed outside after a very nice conversation to catch the last evening light. I was already worried that it would be too dark, but obviously I hadn’t considered that I have a way better camera than some years ago when I last tried to take pictures in the twilight.
In the end I just walked a few blocks and took pictures of just about all the things that caught my eye, since I didn’t have much time until it really got dark. There is almost nothing obvious to take pictures of around here, so one has to keep the eyes open for things that go unnoticed under normal circumstances. After all this is just a “Kiez”, a neighbourhood which isn’t that fancy, so one runs out of interesting pre-war buildings to photograph very quickly. I also tried to sneakily take some pictures of people, but without a proper zoom lens it’s almost impossible to do that without them noticing. And you never know what reaction that could provoke! However, as you might have noticed already, today I was lucky with that! The two girls in the photo were trying to see something through a window and weren’t paying attention, so I quickly turned around and took a picture. Shots like those are good training since there isn’t much time to get the camera ready. Already when I was walking past them I smelled the opportunity and put the camera in the right setting almost automatically.
Although I am still very fond of the idea that only the best picture of the day should be featured on this blog, I also realised that picking just that one picture is really hard. I therefore reactivated my flickr account and will put some of the pictures which I also like on there. You can also find many of my old pictures on it.
day 2: katamari goes berlin
katamari goes berlin © Verena Fischer 2011
On the second day of my adventures into photography my fiance Ezequiel and me planned to go to the Berlin Zoo and Aquarium. And we failed! Let me start at the beginning though: We made the curious decision to go to the Taschen bookstore on Friedrichstraße before heading to the zoo. Apparently a delicious mistake.
Before we went to the bookstore we actually stopped by a strange little exhibition of media art with the title “What machines dream of” in the Automobil Forum Unter den Linden. I had seen the exhibition before together with my brother and it had only a few interesting exhibits that were already broken now that I was seeing it the second time round. Sadly this is the fate of media artworks that invite interaction: People tend to break them! The exhibition was a production of the Ars Electronica museum in Linz which has a wide range of interesting media art exhibits including a virtual environment CAVE which I visited a few years ago with my mother. It’s a fantastic museum! Although this specific exhibition in the Automobil Forum is not so special, it is worth a stroll since it is free of charge. Also take note of the speaking piano which is a speech synthesizer that only uses a piano to read out a text and is presented every half an hour. It’s a bit dissonant, but interesting nonetheless. However, today I completely forgot about it, what a shame!
After the exhibition we went to the Taschen store as planned. Bookstores are dangerous though and we ended up leaving the shop with 3 heavy books. The book I got shows the history of photography on 700 pages! Very fitting, very nice, but also very heavy. Not exactly the kind of book to take to the zoo! And Ezequiel’s books were even bigger and heavier. In the end we just decided to walk around Mitte a bit more and then to return home. We continued along Friedrichstraße and were then drawn along Leipziger Straße, because from afar we saw the interesting building of the Museum für Kommunikation. Again from there we then saw on the next square something that looked like a giant Katamari! Of course we went to investigate and this is where today’s picture was taken. The sculpture called Houseball by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen from 1996 was actually not meant to be a Katamari (well, obviously …), but was supposed to be a “symbol of displaced populations, the ordeal of refugees” (read more here). I however, just have the melody of We love Katamari in my head!
experiments in experience 