Lux Fine Photography

Saturday, 9 April 2011

No. 12

Fresh off the boat so to speak. We walked to Mount Saint Bernards Abbey, just outside of Shepshed, Leicestershire. It was a lovely day today, very sunny with a hint of breeze. We walked through the Broadmarsh Reservoir and slogged up the hill - this is halfway up the hill in between the reservoir and the abbey.

Friday, 8 April 2011

Jewish Memorial, Berlin

Perspective is a wonderful thing.

From Berlin.de:

"Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, located in Mitte on a stretch of the former “death strip”, where the Wall once stood near the Brandenburg Gate, is Berlin’s stunning monument to the Holocaust, dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide of World War II. Impressive in its awesome grey soberness, rather than sombreness, it includes an underground Ort der Information (Information Centre) located on the south-eastern side of the memorial grounds, accessible via two flights of stairs or a lift.  

The 800sqm Information Centre complements the abstraction of the memorial with personal documentation about individuals and families. This includes biographical details, recordings and information about memorial sites throughout Germany and Europe. Documenting the universal issue of genocide, the centre represents a central focus on the diverse memorial sites across Germany which stress the living memory aspect of remembrance. In Berlin an examples of this is the Stolpersteine (tripping stones) initiative – plaques on street pavements, usually outside the house’s main entrance, commemorating deported Jewish residents.  

It took 17 years for the Memorial to be completed in Berlin. Its foundation stone was a Bundestag resolution passed on June 25, 1999 to erect a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This was followed by years of discussion and deliberation, until the Monument was completed on May 8, 2005. US architect Peter Eisenmann conceived the winning design consisting of 2711 rectangular blocks of concrete laid out in grid formation, recalling tombstones. The monument is open day and night and it is possible to walk through the concrete slabs at one’s own pace. Visitors are not allowed to climb on them though, something which is particularly hard for younger visitors and small children to resist. The effect is that of inner dislocation in a destabilising maze as the ground is uneven and the blocks vary in height and size. An ideal setting for quiet contemplation."

Wednesday, 6 April 2011

Pretty, Pretty Sainsbury's

Hottest day of the year so far! Sainsbury's is not really somewhere where you'd think of funky dunky squares of coolness - but what do I know? I liked how almost every window pane was showing something different, even when they were reflecting the same object.

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

Gare du Nord, Paris

I just liked the way his coat moved.

Monday, 4 April 2011

Just Playing

When I was a kid i liked making prints with potatoes and paint, cutting out patterns in the potato. When I got to be a teenager it was lino cutting and ink prints which was kinda cool. Today it is photoshop and I am still just playing and making interesting visual stuff. I don't usually play with my photos to this extent, usually the photo that you get is pretty much what I saw in front of me when I took the picture. This was a photo I had previously played with, so think of this as flutterbies 2.0.

Sunday, 3 April 2011

Berlin Wall, Berlin

Well a piece of the wall anyway, placed between an aging Soviet Union flag, a tourist shop and Checkpoint Charlie - art is where you find it. I liked the abstract expressionist feel it had to it. It's funny I am old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is the first major world event that I can remember being consciously aware of - seeing people hacking pieces off it and sitting on top of it, concurring the fear of all it represented. A kinda cool moment in the scheme of things.

From Wikipedia:

"The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc officially claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany. However, in practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post–World War II period.

The Berlin Wall was officially referred to as the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart" (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall) by GDR authorities, implying that neighbouring West Germany had not been fully de-Nazified. The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the "Wall of Shame" – a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt – while condemning the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB) that demarcated the border between East and West Germany, both borders came to symbolize the "Iron Curtain" between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc.

Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin, from where they could then travel to West Germany and other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, the wall prevented almost all such emigration. During this period, around 5,000 people attempted to escape over the wall, with estimates of the resulting death toll varying between 100 and 200.

In 1989, a radical series of political changes occurred in the Eastern Bloc, associated with the liberalization of the Eastern Bloc's authoritarian systems and the erosion of political power in the pro-Soviet governments in nearby Poland and Hungary. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, a euphoric public and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the wall; the governments later used industrial equipment to remove most of the rest. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on 3 October 1990."

Friday, 1 April 2011

Rooftops

I just liked the angles in this picture and the different tones.