photobook inspiration

yes, i turned this picture upside down to make it easier to read.

on the berlin visit, i saw the most inspiring photobooks! i noticed them on the shelf and saw the interesting stitched spines and asked about them. then we passed a couple of lovely hours, looking through them. they were so inspiring! and the photos were incredible - not your average family vacation photos, but more like a hardbound national geographic. just lovely!

and even more inspiring were the photobooks they made of a trip to morocco - five of them, each grouped by color - red, white, blue, green and ochre. just exquisite and so inspiring! i have hundreds of photos and while they're largely not the artworks that anna's photos were, it was such a great way to preserve them, rather than just paging through them on my phone or searching my computer for the right one. definitely got to make some for us. anybody know a good photobook manufacturer?

 

part 4 :: long weekend in berlin :: an unexpected mural at the park inn

in 2018, this mural - a colorful work of ceramics and glass - was uncovered behind a wall at the park inn in berlin. it's the tall building right beside the tower that's the symbol of berlin. it was the pride of east berlin in its day and today, it's a radisson. public art was a big deal in east germany and this beautiful, colorful work is just one example from 1970s berlin. one could easily be inspired by these same colors today. 

down in one corner, there were two names and they made a public appeal to find those people. gertraude pohl came forward to say that she was the pohl part of the signature. walk had made the ceramics and as the story was told to me, i don't know whether they came forward. gertraude had the sketches she had made of the work, back in the early 70s. and through them, she helped with the restauration.

four of the restored panels can be seen at the hotel today. the other five have disappeared without a trace. perhaps into the home of some art collector. or maybe they ended up in storage somewhere and they will be similarly rediscovered sometime in the future. i hope it's the latter. 

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oh, and i found an article about it online here - just use the google translate function if you, like me, don't read german.