"Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees"
~ Paul Strand
Berlin
Berlin, in the 1980s, was a phenomenally unique, disquieting place. Still wearing the shabby coat of post-war Europe, Berlin wandered blurry-eyed and alone in the midst of East Germany. An island, isolated, it pursued a surreal dream of art and music, drugs and Weissbier, Punks and Squatters. Kurfürstendamm Strasse bravely remembered the glory days of Weimar while Wansee still believed in Prussian gentility. And no matter what direction walked...Die Mauer-the Wall.
I traveled to Berlin in search of Joseph Beuys, but found instead a place of somnamblists and charlatans. The desiccated, burnt-out shells of churches, apartment blocks and businesses still haunted the skyline. In Kreuzburg, a day could be spent wandering, never hearing spoken German- Turkish was much more common (Germany had not yet begun its pogrom against the Gastarbeiter). For German males, the only way to escape compulsory military service was to move to Berlin.
So they did, the crazies and artists, the hangers-on. And always the specter of the Wall. A kind of euphoric claustrophobia. Until finally, speeding through East Germany, watching the rear-view mirror for the flashing lights of the polizei, desperately trying to beat the curfew and make the next train back to Amsterdam, the dream recedes- only these images remain.