Bärenquell

After having selected and processed my images of Heilstätten Beelitz in a first ‘run’ last week, I have now started with our next destination: the Bärenquell Brewery in Berlin. It concerns a historic complex of monumental buildings from the early 20th century, unused since 1994 and thanks to vandalism, burning and metal looting in a very deplorable state (though ‘cheered up’ big time with graffiti), waiting for demolition.

To us it was a great experience to enter the facility and to capture its final phase of existence. We felt a gloomy atmosphere, the level of senseless destruction was saddening and to witness drop-outs hanging around the buildings being busy with tearing off the last bits of metal was rather discomforting (strangely enough we also saw two young girls there too, who seemed to be beamed down from outer space). And still it was a great adventure that allowed you to be totally there, peaking in terms of intensity and level of alertness – fully focused at what you see and hear, at the photographic possibilities the area have to offer, and at the same time fully conscious of the danger that lures, both possibly coming from fellow human-beings as from holes in the floors, things coming down from the ceiling and everything in between. Driven by an unstoppable urge to discover and hunger for images we felt and moved like commandos storming room in room out, corridor in corridor out, literally chasing images.

Strangely enough I had to think about this when looking back at the occasion earlier this week, when I met again for the first time since 33 years with one of my old loves.  What stroke us both was the immediate familiarity we felt with each other that blew away the distance created by those 33 years. Even more astounding to me was the flow I came into, triggered by seeing all those familiar face expressions and ways of looking and talking, that took me back almost immediately to who I was, to my mental state at the age of 22 when we had our very brief but intense affair and when so much was changing to us. I suddenly felt, fully aware from who I am now, the high level of intensity of being and experiencing at that age, a level that is currently pretty rare in day-to-day life, but very much similar to being in a creative flow, like I experienced at the Bärenquell Brewery.  This told me that you really have the power to travel in (your) (life)time and that your mental state is a matter of choice – a river which flow you can alter as you like and to which, as opposed to anything else (thinking of Heraclitus), you can descend into again, time after time. This also reminds me of how as a child, in my more introspective moments, I imagined that I was merely the thought or remembrance of myself as an old man, my elder self, thinking back of his youth. As if I felt that old soul looking with me and through my child’s eyes – and in this way nurtured and enriched his mind with my imagination. In this way also this experience triggered by my old love enriched me, allowing me to take this along to my now, my home, my love today.

Meetings like these, and similarly these photographic explorations and the camaraderie we had during our trip – they allow us to wander and change the flow of our mental river. They are like rapids, like the transitional and more intense scores in that single, sometimes clearly heard but often hardly noticed symphony of life that make us want to join in and play.

Surely the images taken at the Bärenquell represent some of the dark episodes of this symphony – no illusions about that. These images aren’t pleasing at all. But just like immense beauty also negative intensity, as felt in anxiety, has the power to release the sublime, the ability to release ourselves into (life)time traveling deep into ourselves. Experiencing that make that spring - of love, friendship and joy of life we have in us feeding our lives - well up with even more vigor.

Old crap

Last week I visited with a few fellow members of the Old Crap Society (Oude Meuk Genootschap – OMG) several locations in and around Berlin, including the Heilstätten Beelitz, the Bärenquell Brauerei, a depot of Berlin Wall elements, Chemiewerk Rükana Rüdersdorf and finally Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf – places that have been able to escape from the wrecking balls but not really to stand the test of time. Besides six memorable evenings full of sausage and beer, good company and conversation, it gave us an adventurous dip in the phenomenon of ‘Urban Exploration’ (also referred to as ‘urbex’) – a sport that comes to the core of us as OMG.

What makes urbex to such a fun? Well, in the first place it is a kind of adventure that appeals to the boy in us as it stimulates imagination beyond any belief: the excitement of penetrating into decayed buildings, where the ghosts of the past have entered into a secret pact with the strong arm of security services that could emerge behind every corner. Feeling the hunger of the hunter – hunting for images in this case. The sound of splintering glass, the danger of falling through the rotten floor, the cold wind that bleaks through the open windows into the abandoned corridor; the distant stumbling of people living on the edge of society fiddling with paintbrushes or old metals, possibly preparing a can of beans over a fire of scrap wood.

In terms of photography – urbex is in the end a branch of photography – the job seems to be simple: making images of old crap. But to make images that are as exciting as the experience of making them is not as easy as it may sound. That excitement is almost impossible to be captured into the frame of an image, as becomes clear in post-processing. It turns out that the actual deal is to superimpose an emotion or idea of your own that is independent of place and time, that is more enduring and convincing than the fascination for decay and destruction. To transcend from transient matter, on the wings of your imagination, the desire to find the endlessness in the perishable.

The images that want to survive the remorseless selection must express the beauty of melancholy, accentuating mortality – but also as sacrifice, as stairs to a higher state of being, as windows to new life – all emphasized by the colors of autumn and the humid grayness outside that both emboss and accelerate the transformation. The desolation in the moment of death is further emphasized by faint signs of human life, like rags of lace, the skeleton of a chair, the signature of a graffitist, the shadow of an occasional visitor (or: the photographer himself?). But foremost by the sheds of light – that are nowhere else as pure, soft and essential as here, where there is barely anything of value left. To see the light in darkness, in conversion – to capture the mystical moment, I see that as the real challenge secluded in urbex photography.