STEGLITZ ENCOUNTERS | the people

Photos by Gundula Friese

I have lived in Berlin for about 20 years and have experienced the constant change and transformation of this city up close. What hardly seems to change, however, are our parks.

The tree and water landscapes give us the feeling that we are experiencing something constant, something unchangeable. Something that connects us with our inner nature. The only thing that changes is the light. Light is one of the most mysterious phenomena. When we take a look at its distorting properties and examine the moment of exposure by transferring it to the magical surface of a photosensitive film, we will sometimes enter the most intimate corners of our human soul. 

For this experiment I choose an analog medium format camera and use overlaid roll film material from a country that no longer exists. The people who place themselves in my picture form subjective, emotional fields. They enter into a symbiosis with their surroundings, like actors on a stage. We know that light is the ultimate speed in the universe and at the same time can maintain its fundamental dimension, time itself. If we, as viewers of the portraits, understand both the people viewed and ourselves as passengers on a beam of light, we have understood the shamanic quality of artistic photography and the experiment would have succeeded.

– Gundula Friese