Berlin
DESCRIPTION
In Berlin I worked alone, imagining all who had walked where I was walking, those who had taken the same route as me, going to the same places. I wondered what they looked like and what was on their minds, what they were wearing, who they were with, and how long they lived. Berlin is full of ghosts. Whenever I had the freedom to wander, I took it as a gift of prolonged, uninterrupted time for reflection. For the most part no one bothered me. I felt invisible, as if I were floating above the city, swooping down occasionally to timidly snap a photo or two.
Once in a while, I found the courage to ask someone if I could photograph them. My approach was direct. I made one or two shots of each person, noted their name, thanked them, and kept going. My only direction was that they should look into the camera, and I always apologized for not knowing German. I found that most young people spoke to me in English anyway, and encountered very few who refused my camera. In between photographing places of pain, I would visit my friends and make intimate photographs of them, usually in repose. It was a strange mix of death and life, pain and pleasure; life, death, and giving life again. There was a sense of youth, freedom and joy I felt in Berlin and found a way to do that with casual, affectionate pictures of my new friends.
The photographs are organized geographically from West to East, a metaphorical walk in the direction of the rising sun but also into my own past. This book is not a document, it is a dream within a dream within another dream. Berlin is immense, there was no way I could cast a wide enough net to what it’s like; instead I have painted a picture of then and now, pain and pleasure, some people who died long ago, those who are living and young, all from my own perspective.