Antropologia i obserwacja 11

Der Himmel über Berlin

When we were walking home from my son’s football training crossing a railway bridge at Gesundbrunnen we saw a heavy cloud arching over the Fernsehturm. Der Himmel über Berlin. It was impressive, people stopped on their bikes to look at it. “Looks like a black rainbow”, said my son. And then the very next day in Mitte I photographed a Belgian teenager with dyed hair and stitches under his black eye (the result of a bicycle accident). These photos clicked together so well. Never-ending autumn, romantic concrete landscapes, sensitive young people wearing bomber jackets, a world stuck in the cold wave melancholia. These photos were incarnations of the visual clichés of the city of Berlin. These clichés may come to you through music, architecture, fashion; to me they came through photography (Michael Schmidt!). I think they are a reason why a lot of us have chosen to live here and sometimes – for me at least – this cold imagery works as a kind of visual comfort blanket. I decided to take it easy, enter a photographic comfort zone and for some time not look for anything new. Simply enjoy the safe and known and let the cliché live.

Want to see more of Kuba? Here is his last episode.