For a change of pace, and in order to hone my eye for formatting photos, I decided to step away from people photography for a bit and embark on something which I have never really attempted before: photographing interiors. By this I was inspired by some of the photos I took inside some of Sevilla’s historic buildings. The challenge is to capture the elegance and beauty of a room while working within a confined space.
These images are from my first attempt. I shot them in a club here in Berlin which was empty at the time, a club in a historic 19th century building that used to house craftspeople’s workshops. It’s a first attempt, more to follow…
Here are more photos which I brought back from Sevilla. This time not people-centric, but exploring the details that make a city, the colours, the grit, the imperfections…. which to me say more about a city, it’s history and its culture than any panorama shot out there van convey. Well, that’s my opinion…
I have uploaded the last set of my Morocco travelogue section with photos from Meknes, one of Morocco’s four imperial cities. Meknes is a bit off the beaten track, not as popular and crowded as nearby Fes, but I hugely enjoyed the city, which is relaxed and its people extremely friendly and welcoming, more so than in the larger tourist destinations. It helped that I stayed in a very cute and comfortable Riad with a room on the rooftop, run by a verg welcoming family.
Meknes doesn’t have that many obvious tourist attractions, which was fine by me as I enjoyed wandering the streets and having a relaxed time photographing the old town, again fascinated by the many colours and textures on display, which is what I tried to capture in the photographs.
Again, all photos taken with a Fujifilm X-T10, except for one or two iPhone photos.
Casablanca was my fourth stop on my Morocco itinerary. I had allocated only two days for it, mostly on the recommendations of friends and guidebooks who claimed that there was not much to see in Casablanca. They were wrong.
There are basically three sections to the set. The first one is a series of photos which I took around and inside the huge Hassan II Mosque, which is the largest mosque outside of Saudi-Arabia, and one of the very few mosques in Morocco where non-Muslims are allowed to enter. It is a fascinating building, and quite an engineering feat. It also understands itself as an inclusive place of worship, incorporating design elements from Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism.
The second group of photos were taken by the seaside, on and near the “corniche” at Anfa. Here I shot the dilapidated, enpty seaside resorts and other once-modern buildings by the sea. These photos are in colour, the rest are in black and white.
The third group of photos I took in the city center, featuring chiefly the art deco buildings from colonial times. Additional photos highlight the new, modern architecture along the sea front.
One of my tourist guidebooks mentioned that people tend to come away disappointed from Casablanca because they associate the city with the movie of the same name, and that the city is nothing like the movie. Apart from the fact that I don’t recall much of the city of Casablanca being shown in the movie (I remember mostly the inside of Rick’s bar and some vague matte paintings of a city in the background), I actually found that the Art Deco buildings reminded me very much of the movie: the vestiges of a passed era, an architecture and style not quite here nor there, i.e. not quite European and not quite Moroccon, and above all, with its emphasis on white and black, best viewed in black and white.
I’m currently still sorting through the hundreds of photos which I took on my three week trip through Morocco, and after the street portrait & photography set, I have now published another set in the Travelogue section of my site, this one focusing on the colours of Marrakesh. Colour is what visitors tend to associate with Moroccon cities: above all the warm reds, but also rich blues, bright yellow and orange offset against white, ochre and other Earth colours. And indeed, the colours are astounding, but even more so are the intricacies of the designs combining the colours, whether they are mosaics, tiles, paintings, reliefs or graffiti.
In Marrakesh, I was staying in a Riad in the heart of the medieval, maze-like medina. I only had to step outside the door and walk down whichever alley I chose to be submerged in the richness of Moroccon design. Haunting the medina in the early hours of the morning and capturing the colours and the textures was certainly a highlight of my stay in Marrakesh. Quite frankly, this random walking through unknown parts of the city is an activity which I enjoy so much more than sightseeing – even though this activity was lost on the locals, who kept pointing out to me that there were no sights whereever I was heading.
The set of photos I chose to upload focuses mostly on details. I included the photos that are about what I enjoyed most in Morocco, the unique feeling that emanates from the colourful, playful designs. Apart from the photos from the median, there are also some taken in the cheerfully blue Jardin Majorelle (erstwhile home of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent), the Menara Garden and the Saadian Tombs. There are some photos from a couple of tanneries where leather is made from cow and goat hide. There are three black and white images from the New City as well. I did include a number of street photographs as did not want the set to solely focus on design. After all, any portrait of a city is only complete with the people in it.
All except two images were captured with a Fujifilm X-T10 camera, the remaining two were captured with the iPhone Hipstamatic app.
Almost 20 years after it was built, Potsdamer Platz still divides opinions. Some hate it, some shrug it off, some like it. For some, it’s a symbol of Berlin’s post-reunion megolamania, a failed wanna-be Disney-Manhattan. However, for a city that does not take many chances on cutting-edge, innovative architecture, Potsdamer Platz is remarkable in that here at least are a few designs which did not originate in a Lego box. Personnaly, I like it.
Not even an hour away from Berlin, Potsdam is a city that feels very different from Berlin. It’s always fun to play the tourist in a place so close to home.
All photos taken with the Hipstamatic app on the iPhone. Hipstamatic is still my favourite camera app, and actually by now the only one I use.
Over the past 12 months, I shot a series of photographs throughout the Berlin districts of Kreuzberg and Neukoelln, two traditionally working-class districts that are now being gentrified. The series focuses on items – furniture, cloths, shoes, electronic appliances – placed outside on the pavements by local residents.
Berliners always had a tendency to get rid of unwanted items by simply disposing of them in the public space. However, in Neukoelln and Kreuzberg, this phenomenon has become increasingly more prominent as gentrification increases, and as the old working-class (or unemployed) tenants have to make way for the hipsters and the young professionals. Disposing of trash by simply putting it out on pavements and in parks is against the law, of course, and as such constitutes an act of defiance against Germany’s much loved sense of order. This act of defiance may simply be down to lazy nests or economic reasons (you have to pay money to get bulky items properly disposed of), but it can also be seen as a defiant gesture, the departing locals giving the finger to the new arrivals before they leave the neighborhood; or a sign of protests against the prettification and increasing orderliness of the neighborhood – in the same way that graffiti is used as a protest against law and order. Be that as it may, it is this act of defiance that I chose to document with this series. Continue reading “Detritus: Signs of Uneasy Cohabitation”→
I recently got around to tidying up the Travel section on my web site, and at the same time posted new images from my last trip to Kolkata.
I first visited Kolkata back in 1986 (it was still called Calcutta back then). The trip was a nightmare. The friend I was travelling with ended up in hospital with dyssentri, and instead of travelling around the country, we were stuck in the city which back then was quite horrible. It was extremely overcrowded – people were fleeing the impoverished countryside in masses and ended up as squatters in Kolkata. The city was polluted, smelly and traffic perpetually congested. I literally still had nightmares of the place months after being back in Europe. It took me almost 30 years to go back to the city, but when I did, in 2013, I found a place much changed for the better. It is a lot less crowded, and it is less dirty and hectic than Mumbai for instance. I returned there again in 2014 and 2015, which tells you that now I am quite fond of the place.
Kolkatans take pride in that their city is different from other Indian cities, and indeed it is, even though, as an outsider, I may find it difficult to judge just what that difference is. Kolkata is relatively young, of course; daring back to the 18th century only. It used to be India’s most populous city, until Mumbai overtook it, and during the British occupation, it was the capital of the British Raj. And indeed, it is this British past which characterises Kolkata to a large degree – certainly in its architecture, from the Victoria Memorial on down to the many stately villas, many of them now sadly crumbling or being demolished. The city once boasted a vibrant Jewish community, which numbered 5000 before Indian independence, but is now down to 26 members. Similarly, Kolkata is home to India’s only Chinatown, but the ethnic Chinese community has also dwindled considerably.
The city is named after the goddess Kali, and a friend of mine argues that it this which leads to women being far more empowered in Kolkata than in the rest of India.
The photos I put up are from those three last trips – unfortunately I have no photos left from the 1986 trip. I organised the images into three sets:
The City: as the name implies, photos from around the city. It is not meant to be a travel guide, and many of the landmark sites are missing from the collection. Instead I have included images of those places which interested me the most. My favourite ones were probably the overgrown grounds of the National Library and the equally overgrown Victorian-era South Park Street Cemetery. Also included are photos from two of the three Kolkatan synagogues.
Kolkata At Night: these are scenes from night time festivities during three Kolkata festivals: the Durga Pujas (in honour of the goddess Durga, a manifestation of the goddess Kali), the Kali Durgas (in honour of Kali), and the all-Indian festival of Diwali.
Across the River: images from the area outside Kolkata, on the opposite banks of the Hooghly River, as that particular branch of the Ganges is called – Chandannagar, an area which once belonged to the French (and Portuguese and Swedes).
In every city, one comes across these things: installations or public art, or random arrangements, that are just incongruous. Here is one I came across by Berlin’s main train station. It is meant as publicity for Mexico, maybe it stands for the Mexican Day of the Dead. What struck me was the juxtaposition of the spring flowers and the skeletal corpse. A reminder that in every beginning, there is also an end?
I recently got around to tidying up the 
