Re-photo

I found Berlin a rather confusing city when I visited there for a few days in July 2011. Fortunately I was there with my wife, who speaks German, and my son who had booked the flat we were staying in and he was able to use his phone to find our way there. He also had his young daughter in a push chair. We’d flown into the city, and my first impression was how well organised the airport there was compared to Heathrow, always something of a nightmare.

The flat was large and relatively luxurious, with the kind of mod cons that we don’t have at home, though without the several thousand books and other clutter that make our place home.

It was getting dark as we made our way out from the flat and on to Rosa Luxemburg Str to look for somewhere to eat (and drink) and to do some shopping. Just a few yards up the street in Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz was the Volksbühne (People’s Theatre), described as Berlin’s most iconic theatre, coming out of and 1890s movement to provide realistic theatre for working class Berliners, with the motto ‘Die Kunst dem Volke), Art for the People.  The building from 1913-4 was heavily bombed duirng the second world war and rebuilt in 1953-4 with a very similar frontage.

On the street close to the theatre were a number of quotations from Rosa Luxemburg, who together with Karl Liebknecht was captured by the Freikorps right-wing paramilitary militias during the revolutionary struggles in Berlin in January 1919. They were questioned under torture and then ordered to be executed; she was hit on the head by a rifile butt, then shot in the head and her body thrown in a nearby canal.

We took a walk in the dark and I took a few pictures, though most were rather blurred.

The steps led into a park with a large round pond, but my pictures of that are too blurred to post.

Wir bleiben alle!  We are all staying put, a housefront against gentrification of the area.

Smokers Welcome. Though to quite what I’m not sure.

Babylon, a cinema opposite the Volksbühne. A typical ‘Neue Sachlichkeit‘ (New Objectivity) building from 1928/29, architect Hans Poelzig and is regarded as typical of its construction period, opposite to the Volksbühne. The building was erected 1928/29 according to plans of architect Hans Poelzig and is regarded as typical of its construction period, Neue Sachlichkeitand is still a cinema.

More pictures from Berlin in later posts.

I had two cameras with me, A Fuji X100, with its fixed 35mm equivalent lens and a Leica M8. As I was working in colour I had a very limited choice of lenses available for the Leica as for colour they needed to be fitted with an IR cut filter and I only had these for two lenses. The unusual 1.33x crop factor turned the 35mm f1.4 into a 47mm standard lens and the 90mm f2.8 to a perhaps more useful 120mm equivalent. Unfortunately the Leica optical viewfinder has never really been too useful for the 90mm, giving you a rather tiny but pretty accurate frame. It’s a fine lens but really needs a camera with live view rather than the optical viewfinder.
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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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