Berlin 2023

A recent walk in Berlin with a film camera …

Introduction

Photography gives me a reason to wander the world without intent, letting it take me where it will. Wandering so, I press my camera shutter when things seem ‘right’. It’s as simple as that. Long gone is any chase after the exotic. These days I prefer my street photography to be more nuanced.

I like street photography for a number of reasons:

• Firstly, it need not have an agenda. I wander the streets and react to what is unfolding. Either I capture a visual impression, or I don’t. Having an agenda would close me off to what is actually happening before me. So, to be agenda-free, and thereby to see what the world is disclosing, is one of the delights of street photography.
• Secondly, a street walk will often result in a mixed bag of pictures: street vistas, portraits, surreal takes, people happenings, abstracts, architecture and so on. That makes it interesting.
• Thirdly, street photography requires a special attitude. It is a process of letting go of habitual ways of seeing. As Kertész said ‘Everybody can look, but they don’t necessarily see’. So we strive to see the world afresh, as if for the first time. Here, a crucial skill is the ability to abstract an idea from the apparent chaos of the street before us. This is the specific challenge of street photography.
• Finally, good street photographs have a transcendental quality, pointing to some ulterior idea. Reading a street photograph in this way can open up the depths of thought.

Prevailing ideas

Let me mention two photographers who’s work set the scene for my visit to Berlin:

Eugène Atget. This process of abstraction that I have referred to, lends itself to association by implication and inference, à la Atget, if you will. One of Atget’s characteristics was to take photographs of quiet spots, even in a busy metropolis. His Parc de Sceaux statues gaze over water or look down broad avenues. Their poses suggest a timelessness, an enduring still-point in the hurly-burly of change. It is this mood, this still-point, that captivates me.

Fred Herzog. Herzog’s colour photographs of Vancouver streets are wonderful. With Atget and Walker-Evans, I place Herzog high in the history of photographic achievement. So it’s a surprising disappointment that a well-established and well-reviewed book like ‘Bystander – a history of street photography’ ¹ makes no mention of Herzog in its 400 pages. It’s plain to see that Herzog was infuenced by Evans who in turn was influenced by Atget. The lineage is quite obvious. To study the Atget/Evans/Herzog axis is to realise something quite profound, something akin to visual poetry.

Like Atget in his Paris, Herzog walked his Vancouver for many days of his life, taking photographs of backstreet shopfronts, billboards, windows, doorways, and, of course, ordinary people in their day-to-day existence. His photography is intimate, focussing on the everyday, on the backstreets he knew well, documenting ordinary street life in a lyrical style.

And here’s the point. What we get from Herzog is ‘lyrical documentary‘ photographs. There is something very appealing to me about this notion.

Other who work in the lyrical style? I would mention Walker-Evans, the founding father of this genre, John Gossage, Judith Joy Ross, Gregory Halpern, and Mark Steinmetz. In Street photography, Willy Ronis, Knut Skjærven, Nick Turpin, Niall McDiarmid, to name just a few.

During my recent return to Berlin, at Knut Skjærven’s invitation, I thought about the photography of Atget and Herzog quite a bit. How to concentrate on the process of abstraction and look for the still-point even when in the midst of a crowd? How to take lyrical photographs, even of the ugly?

Some photographs

In the week I was in Berlin I walked approximately 180,000 steps and exposed 20 rolls of film (36 exposures per 35mm film). Here is a sample:

Some technical aspects

Lyrical street photography is well suited to the film method. The more discerning eye that comes with slow film photography, where every exposure has to count, opens up a different way of seeing. I relegate further technical discussion to the footnotes ².

A final thanks

Apart from the Covid years (last 3 years), I have visited Berlin every year since 2012 and have enjoyed immensely the company of Knut Skjærven.

This visit was suggested by Knut as part of a regular but infrequent Berlin meet involving Bernard, Anne-Marie, Frieder, Conny and Majeed. Thank you Knut for organising the meet and the dinners and thank you to the Group for accepting me in such a friendly manner.