The Beauty and Tragedy of the Berlins Easy Gallery.

In the summer of 2015 I made a trip. A trip I wanted to make for a long time. I dove into Europe and as much of it as I could. Mostly the Balkan states. But I did spend a good amount of time in Berlin. Staying with an old friend. Helping him furnish his apartment and sort of wandering around the city. It was a nice way to spend some time. No real responsibilities, and pretty much saying “yes” to any offer that was presented to me. After a couple weeks of wandering my friend asked why I didn’t start a project series. As I seemed to be merely taking random photographs of the city with no real purpose.

And thus, the idea pf photographing the entire East Side Gallery of the Berlin wall was born. I am sure something like this had been done before. But in my case, I wanted to capture the entirety of each mural. Of course, I didn’t pack all my equipment for what was supposed to be a vacation. So the challenge here was to create panoramic photos, piece by piece, and stitch them together. Some of the shots are composed of almost 30 individual photos. Made without the aid of a tripod. Just me, some steady hands, and some careful overlapping of each photo.

For the uninitiated, The East Side Gallery is a 1.3 kilometer section of the original Berlin wall that is covered in graffiti. Some of it has become iconic and is on display permanently. Other sections are repainted from time to time by other artists. On the whole it is an impressive collection of street art in a city that boasts a lot of impressive street art.

I wanted to try and make a fully stitched Panoramic image of the wall. However this made the resulting image far too large to upload here. Instead I have opted to put together my favourite pieces from the wall. And stitch them into their whole sections. 

The whole process took me several hours. Waiting for sections to be clear of people. Figuring out angles and distances. Working against the afternoon sun.

It was a rewarding project and I am glad I did it. It is nice having creative friends. To this day these are some of the only images from my month in Berlin that I go back and look at regularly.

Sadly, I lost the original files of my work from this summer and these are the only photographs that remain. In a way I’m glad that these are the ones that are still surviving.