ROMA

Juli 3, 2018

For my birthday in February Tatjana and I flew to Rome.
The Italian capital has become one of my favourite cities.

Originally we wanted to drive to Venice, Bologna and Rome
with my camper van, but due to the cold and rainy weather
we went to Rome by plane and stayed in an airbnb close to
Piazza Navona.

I just used my Leica Camera filled with very old (expired 1987)
Ilford Film and the city was enveloped in a blanket of white
snow when we walked along the Tiber.

We enjoyed the winter sun, had the best amatriciana pasta
and visited the Galleria Borghese.

It was a wonderful 5 day getaway trip and the best birthday.

CADIZ II

FishMarket

Cádiz Cathedral

Tavira Tower

Sight of the Old Town

The second day of 2018 was just wonderful. We started the day at the fish market and looked
at some freshly caught cazón – shool shark – which tastes so good when fried. The fishermen
just set up their stands. Many stores were closed but we managed to get bread and cheese for our
breakfast.

Inside the old cathedral the light came in through the large windows and illuminated the
roman catholic church with a soft and subtle light. The cathedral took a long time to build
and so the styles changed during the process which can be seen and is quite interesting.

Up the Tavira tower you can see over the entire city of Cádiz. The harbour with its cruise ships,
the big bridge, the new part of town with all its highrises and the long beach area between
Cádiz and the mainland of Spain.

The sunshine in January was a pleasant change to the grey and depressing weather
Germany has to offer this time of year. So we walked all across the old town and ate tapas
before we headed back to the Cathedral to climb its tower for a spectacular sunset view.

It was the last night in Cádiz and we celebrated with the friends we visited and packed
our things for the journey to Sevilla the next morning.

Cádiz

Mai 28, 2018

„Do you want to join me visiting my best friend in Cádiz for New Year’s Eve?“ Tatjana asked me.
I never even heard of this town in Andalusia before but couldn’t be any happier to have an excuse
to leave gray and cold Deutschland behind and fly to the south of Spain.

We booked our flight to Sevilla and didn’t even know the right pronunciation of the city we were about to visit.

The 28th of January couldn’t have been more dull and looming. As our early morning flight rose above
the clouds covering not only the airport but also all the people still recovering from christmas festivities,
we celebrated the rays of sunlight entering through our plastic window.

Sevilla was welcoming us with 20°C and not one cloud could be seen, neither in the sky nor in our flawless
vacation moods. So we head out to the train station and boarded a regional train to Cádiz.

Our beautiful AirBnb was situated right in the heart of the city next to Torre Tavira. An old watchtower,
left from the literal golden days of Cádiz when this little sleepy town was the center of the trade-routes
with the Americas.

The town is divided into a small round half-island, home of old and run down buildings, narrow streets,
a market place, a cathedral, an abundance of watchtowers, a castle, and the pride jewel – a waterfront
where a scene of James Bond with Halle Berry was shot, pretending it was Cuba.

We had the best of days. We wandered through and around all the little parts of the old town,
had sundowners at the waterfront, ate fried dog-shark and best of all only wore our t-shirts in december.
NYE could come with ease, what a perfect way to end the year…

to be continued.

Seoul

August 4, 2016

In September 2014 I visited my friend Eun-Song who was doing an internship in Seoul. I was there way to short, only 4 nights, but really enjoyed my stay. Seoul is a buzzing city. The area I stayed in „Itaewon“ is a place to go out and you can find lots of Americans.

Having a native speaker in my friend was invaluable. We went to the market full of analog cameras and visited the old part of town. At night there were exhibitions and record store bars with lots of soju.

I had my Leica M3 and my favourite film – Fuji Acros 100. The color photography was cheap Rossman Film (RIP) – a disguised Fuji Superia 200.

These pictures make me miss Korean BBQ, Kimchi and the night I was drinking on a rooftop.

pals

Juni 1, 2016

when it started raining in girona my plans to go to the pyrenees quickly changed and i decided to hop in my vw bus and drive towards sunny weather. i got a tip on instagram from my friend lisa to visit pals.

pals is a small town not far from the ocean and one feels like going back in time when walking up to el pedro and the torre. i was very lucky to arrive with a bus load of german retirees. it was so much fun listening to their conversations and watch them flood the streets of this peaceful little village.

it felt like they were walking wallets to the people selling ceramics and other local products in the little stores inhabiting the old stone buildings.

i often set my digital camera to black and white. it is very useful to understand the contrast and since i always shoot raw i can easily convert to color. this time i decided not to and applied an ilford hp5 filter of vsco.

girona

Juni 1, 2016

pforzheim in the south of germany has about as many inhabitants as girona, a river flows through both cities and the layout is almost the same. girona has one significant difference – it looks pretty and has much more charme. but basically the two towns are the same. even the landscape and the periphery resemble each other.

since i am on my trip i always compare the new sights, sounds and people to things i already know. it is quite fun to find similarities to things you are already accustomed to in an environment that is totally new to you.

girona is a wonderful city. i am lucky i was there when it wasn’t overrun with tourists looking for the places where game of thrones was filmed and eating overpriced meals in the old part of the town.

what i really like to do is to sit down and just watch the people passing by and take the same picture over and over again, just with a different protagonist that presents itself to me and my camera. it is something i started in berlin and i really want to continue. it is part of my „kleine arbeiten“ project. the pictures look very good when hung in a row as the horizon and background repeat.

oh and i had a catalan sausage for lunch at mononcle . so delicious!

L94

Mai 29, 2016

L94 is the bus that took me from and to barcelona. i am camping at the beach very close to the airport. the last time i visited barcelona it was in a different mindset and more pleasure oriented. this time i looked at the city with different eyes.

the busy streets of the city center with the little second hand shops, the many skateboarders and the many sights marketed to tourists didn’t spark my photographic interest. it was the bus journey going from the periphery of barcelona towards the city center and the changing landscape that really caught my attention.

the first time i realized how satisfying it can be to take pictures from a moving train or in this case bus it can be was on a journey through the winter-landscape between berlin and karlsruhe in january of 2010. back then i used my rolleiflex and already anticipated the beautiful effect of blur caused by horizontal velocity.

objects closer to the lens move faster across the focusing screen than those further away. this causes the distant objects to be sharp and detailed whereas the closer objects blur and become distorted.

i used my phone pressed close to the bus window to avoid any reflections and just clicked everytime we passed by something interesting. the delay of the phonecamera required a lot of anticipation on my part. a very important trait of photography.

in barcelona i enjoyed some wonderful downtime, waiting for my „streets“ film to be developed by kitoli photo lab. tomorrow i will pick up my three rolls of snapshots out of my moving car and i am really excited to see how they turned out. then i am on my way to the pyrenees to take some landscape photography while hiking. an unusual subject for me and thus quite challenging and exciting.

aurelia

Mai 23, 2016

i am working on a series where i take pictures out of my car using an olympus mju ii and cheap fuji film. i just point and shoot through my windshield sometimes holding the camera out of the window of my moving car. i photograph everything that catches my eye. paytoll buildings, other drivers, clouds, the strips of lands between borders, mountains, palmtrees, interesting buildings and the scenery when i cross over bridges. i want to make a book using these photographs documenting the different landscapes and architecture in europe. when i came to zagreb i got one roll developed fast in order to check the quality of my work. the person using the frontier developing machine was very interesting and so i thought of getting the next roll of film developed in rome so i can meet those people still believing in the future of film and making a business. it was very hard to find a lab that processes film fast. nearly impossible. all the internet inquiries told me it would take at least a week. so i almost lost hope to continue the project. one day i got out of the metro one stop early to check out the neighborhood and actually found a little place „nova foto“ that would develop my film in one hour. i was sold.

the next day i packed my roll of fuji superia 200 and dropped it off at the store. it wouldn’t have made sense to use the metro to go to the center as it takes about 20 min, so i wandered around aurelia and took some photos of the streets and people. the authenticity of this area fascinated me much more than the pittoresque little streets of trastevere or the vatican. it wasn’t filled with tourists, making me feel like an outsider looking in for the first time.

the hour passed quickly and the prints were still warm when i picked them up. i even got a little plastic photo-album for them.

la luce di roma

Mai 20, 2016

the last time i was in rome it was the winter of 2006 and the city didn’t really have a big impact on me. the skies were grey, so the beautiful color of the people and buildings couldn’t shine as they are in the beautiful sunlight i am so blessed to experience on this journey.

my bus is parked just inside the city periphery and i can reach the buzzing streets of the city center in just 20 min using the public transport system. to start the 4 day stay in italy’s capital i went to the botanical garden to one work on the materials section of this blog and second think about the photographic goals of this visit.

coming from florence i was already used to hoards of tourists, but i didn’t expect roma to have the same „problem“. i don’t consider myself belonging to this group of people and the selfie-stick gopro invasion of europe. but i am after all one of the tourists and don’t speak any italian so i can’t judge. all that is left for me is to imagine all these beautiful piazzas without the travellers and their parasites leeching on their filled wallets. „are you visiting the sistine chapel“ „skip the line“ „selfie sticks for good price“ and horrible spraypaint art is so common that one just accepts the existence of this unaesthetic part of roma.

nevertheless the beauty of roma’s architecture and love of detail outshines everything. i never felt as if i was in a 3 million people metropole. the small streets are made for the cute fiat 500s just as the cafes are made for the romans to sit and enjoy a panino and coffee. it feels as if the history is present and the beauty of old and new things just perfectly go hand in hand. italian style in design, fashion and architecture is as mature as the river tiber and as sophisticated as the uniforms of the carabinieri.

simply put i am in love with roma and very glad that i have come back almost 10 years later wiping the grey skies out of my memory.

bologna part two

Mai 18, 2016

the second part of my day in bologna was wonderful. i just enjoyed longboarding the walkways and got out of the city center, where i discovered the beautiful entranca hall to the department of political science and sociology of the university.

i took a lot of pictures of the polished stoned floors and the huge variety of colors and shapes they come in. i will attach the pictures to the next post which i will call material one. i am planning to take photographs of materials along this trip. such common things as stone or everyday objects like busstops are the only things left to differentiate between cities full of h&m’s and other franchises taking over our world.

i really liked the guy’s t-shirt saying „when does the fun start“. i guess i can say it already begun.

bologna

Mai 16, 2016

yesterday i drove from zagreb to bologna. the drive through slovenia in the evening light was very scenic. i really want to go to slovenia for a longer period and hike the beautiful mountains. i made only one stop to get gas and a sandwich, all the truckers were sitting at the gas station drinking white wine, one was shaving in the restroom.

in italy i saw wonderful thunderstorms driving through veneto to emilia romagna. in my bus i prepared some food and went to bed around 1 am.

today i got up around 8 and organized my things. as my younger sister says, living in a car is easy as long as you organize all your stuff, so i had to make some adjustments because some things are more important than others. around 11 i grabbed my longboard and went to the outer edge of bologna. it is wonderful weather and the arcades with their smooth polished floors are just perfect to skate through.

i used the wifi connection in the café to upload some of todays photos and write this entry. tonight i am going to florence.

foto tuskanac

Mai 14, 2016

i went to a small photo store called foto tuskanac in zagreb and got a roll of film developed and scanned. the pictures were taken with my olympus mju ii. i lost the little window that is in the back of the camera letting you see the kind of film that is inside. so i wanted to make sure there are no light leaks and everything works.

there are a lot of fingerprints on the roll of negatives and the scans are horrible, nevertheless i really like the idea of using cheap film in the olympus and getting it developed along the way. i will also portrait the people working the minilabs. this time a fuji frontier 550.

zagreb

Mai 1, 2016

the third destination of my road trip is zagreb. my friend from karlsruhe jan’s family lives in the upper city and we planned to spend some time together in his hometown.

honestly i didn’t spend much of my energy on taking pictures but rather slowly adjusted to being on the road and traveling. i remade this website with wordpress because i wanted to make it more accessible and add this section where i share my experiences.

this city is a real metropolis with the feeling of a mid sized town. it has an abundance of cafés and bars. the houses are old and shabby and give you a warm feeling with their centuries old stone work decorations. it has a lot of appeal to enjoy the great food and drinks and just let the days pass by with ease. cultural and friendly are the people of zagreb.

jan and julian on soundcloud

castello miramare

Mai 1, 2016

on the way from venice to zagreb i visited castello miramare 5km northwest from trieste. i had a wonderful break in the park surrounding the beautiful building and took a lot of pictures with my analog nikon camera. i am really looking forward to develop this roll of film since it is such an amazing scenic place.

i then drove through the small streets of trieste. a wonderful city which i visited 2 years ago. the weather was very cloudy and it started to rain so i was off to croatia.

venice

April 30, 2016

i was in venice only for one night. after driving through switzerland i arrived at the camp site around 9pm and managed to make my way to venice by train. i used my digital camera and my nikon 28mm f2.8 lens on a tripod to do some long exposures of the canal and the busy streets. i finished my photo walk on the markus square and felt a little out of place with all the tourists and couples.

Kategorie: Blog