And it begins...

So here is the blog.

I just spent 10 days in Berlin (and Vienna), and as I walked around with my SLR loaded with 35mm black and white film, I was constatly asking myself how I should "image the cityscape" (to be pretentious and intellectual). Should I take photos of the common landmarks and famous memorials, or should I stick to lesser-known sidestreets, candid citizens, and quintessential urban montages. The weather was crap the entire time (meaning rainy and grey -- not exactly ideal conditions for photo shoots), and I quickly found myself being drawn to odd angles, nighttime shots, and above all, reflections. I have not yet developed these rolls, but the implications of creating a photo essay of a city only through reflection could be grand...or at least under the auspices of pointed intellectual grandeur.

The new architecture of Berlin is predominately glass and steel--the literature calls it the "architecture of a new democracy" and refers to its transparency as a key ingredient to new forms of artistic and functional representation in a city whose scars are worn in the open and whose image is constantly called into question. I realized that I was drawn to glass and water reflections of well-known areas, buildings, and streets because these were images we rarely stop to notice, they are snippets of life most for which most of us are too busy or preoccupied to stop. Thus, the fact that I was both used to these sights but searching for a new way to view them, led me to stop and find perfect angles in puddles, walk back and forth queerly as I searched for the right balance of light and form. I was comfortable with both my intimate and non-native relationship with the city and finally eschewed that anti-tourist schtick I always have against carrying my camera around. Because of this project, I finally allowed myself to look around and see what I wanted to see how I wanted to see it...perhaps not at facevalue, but with a purpose to get beyond the ghosts and the propaganda, to move past the formality of academia and the pretention of art, to just let it be.