Roadtrip 2011

C/O Berlin and Fritz Eschen - Berlin Under the Makeshift Roof

Again, we revisit the reoccurring photographic theme of our trip: rephotography.  But never fear; the redundancy ends in the short synopsis. 

On Monday, May 16th, we walked a short block away from our classroom at IES to C/O Berlin.  Housed in the former Royal Post Office building in Berlin-Mitte, C/O Berlin calls itself, “an international forum for visual dialogues.”

C/O Berlin's project manager Ann-Chrisoin Bertrand, along with Marc Volk, led us on a tour of the exhibit on Fritz Eschen's post-war photography of Berlin.  Volk described his process in rephotographing Eschen's work while displaying the result on an iPad.  Sometimes the building no longer existed; other times he had to ask for help from locals who had lived in the neighborhood when the original photo was taken. In a perfect combination of old photography and new media, C/O Berlin guests can also view Volk's modern-day rephotos with their iPhones and iPads via an application created for the exhibit.

Born in 1900 in Berlin, Eschen was a Jewish photojournalist and portrait photographer.  He survived the era of National Socialism through his second marriage to Aryan wife, Gertrude Thumm.  The approximately 120 photos in the exhibit span from 1945 to 1955, capturing everything from the post-war ruins to the Berlin Blockade to the division of the city.  In addition to documenting political tensions of the time, Eschen also portrays the struggle of the people and the rebirth of Berlin's cultural life. 

At the end of the tour, we were free to explore the other exhibits, one of which corresponded with the over-turned car displayed outside the building's entrance.  Like a potential rephoto in itself, the former Royal Post Office was a gymnasium before it became a place for visual exhibition.  So ends another rephotography journey; another investigation into the past, and another modern day translation, this time in the care of Berlin.

 

Centelles Walk: The Video!

Below, you can read about and hear an audio report on our walk through Barcelona to retrace the photographic journey of Centelles, led by our intrepid rephotography leaders Ricard and Natasha from Aqueologia del Punt de Vista!  Here is a visual taste of our epic hunt for historical vantage points.  Enjoy!

 

— Anna Swanson

Centelles Walk with Ricard Martinez and Natasha Christia: Audio Report by Sam Dunnewald

Agustín Centelles [died 1985] was one of the most respected Spanish photojournalists. He made history visible across a wide range of events in Spanish history, including being the only photographer known to have made pictures in Barcelona on the first day of the Spanish Civil War in July, 1936.

On the day following this first rebellion — July 19, 1936  — Centelles ventured out on the streets, photographing the military actions he encountered as he navigated Barcelona. Centelles' walk this day has become the focus of detailed study by Ricard Martinez and Natasha Christia of Barcelona's Archaeologica del punt de vista, and last week they invited Roadtrippers to follow their research by hitting the strees to walk in Centelles' photographic tracks.

Click below to listen to Sam's Report:

Centelles Walk Report: Sam Dunnewald

Research by Ricard and Natasha began with a reconstruction of Centelles' original film rolls and contact sheets, which they exhaustively examined, patiently matching numbering and even the film perforation holes.  The next step was to map the walk, looking for the actual settings of the photographs on the streets. They researched the memoirs and reports of people identified in the photographs, along with news reports from the time. Next, with the actual printed photos in hand, they identified the exact contemporary locations of the pictures, and plotted out the spots where Centelles would have stood. Finally, they combined all of this informaiton, including estimates of the time of day based on the angle of the sun in each photo, and produced a map which reconstructs the actual path Centelles must have taken, marking each photograph on the path.

For our walk, after an extended discussion of the history of the period, Ricard and Natasha lead Roadtrippers into the streets, where they passed out reproductions of the original pictures and invited small groups of us to identify their location and the position of Centelles. Sometmes identification was easy, for example where the original picture included a street number that could easily be tracked in today's Barcelona. But other images show buildings which have today been entirley replaced, leaving only scant if any clues to reconstruction.

At each location we rephotographed the Centelles image: in the two images above Yoni Blumberg is seen searching with his group for the location on the streets [right], and the final product, his own rephotograph [left].

The Centelles Walk was a fntastic opportunity to join two visual scholars in their research, to grapple first hand with the challenge of re-visualizing the past through our own eyes and cameras, and to learn something about a crucial chapter in Spanish history. [This post based on material provided by Archaeologica.]

Photographic Archive of Barcelona

Tuesday the 12th began at a subway station as we met up for the third time with Natasha Christia and Ricard Martinez of Arqueologia del Punt de Vista. Today they'd be getting us into Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona (literally:  Photographic Archive of Barcelona) for a chance to see the oldest photographs of Barcelona that exist, and hopefully find some good pictures for a future rephotography project. Natasha told us that this archive is where pretty much all of her group's projects start. 

The building we were lead to was a perfect example of the way architecture feels in Barcelona. The outside was old and not particularly fancy, and the staircase we took to the second floor had uneven steps. When we got there, the archive looked very different. The doors were polished glass like you might see at a museum, and this feel continued inside through first a reception area and then a small exhibition. After that came a classroom with one wall covered in books, followed by what felt like the classiest cubicals I've ever seen. The walls were wood (or fake wood), and what I'd first thought of as cubicals felt more like offices at second glance. Finally, beyond that the main hallway felt like we were underground in a white plaster building. This was where they stored the photographs. It was a wonderful mix of old, new, beautiful, bland, purposeful, and extravagant — just the way it is all over the city.

Before I get ahead of myself, let's jump back to that classroom. Natasha introduced us to the director of the historical archive, Jordi Serchs. He said hello, made an embarrassed comment about his English (which was perfectly understandable), and then told us about the archive. Barcelona had established a big historical archive system for itself in 1923, and in the mid 1930s the photographic branch was created as a way to preserve pictures of the city. Jordi informed us that the archive is always current through the present, and that they currently have over 2 million pictures. Some of those are digital, but many are not. There's a lot of physical storage of photographs, including literally the oldest photographs of Barcelona that exist. Not only do they still have the first photos taken here, but they still preserve the actual camera that they were taken on. Unfortunately we didn't get to see that.

Next we were split into two groups. Half of us checked out the storage rooms where they keep all of the physical photographs in the archive while the other looked at the darkroom they maintain for when they need to develop new prints of old photos. I saw the storage rooms first.

Rafael Toroella was our guide for the storage rooms, and he lead us into what felt like a giant bank vault but was actually more like a giant refrigerator. These rooms were kept at a constant temperature of 20 degrees Celsius (about 68 Fahrenheit) and 40% humidity to prevent decay of the photos inside. The numbers say perfect weather to me, but it felt pretty chilly. I must be getting used to the hot Barcelona sun. Rafael showed us a number of different ways in which they store photos. Small ones are put into little envelopes and stored in boxes of similarly sized photos. Big ones are covered in simple plastic sheets instead of whole envelopes because of cost reasons. Oddly shaped photos like long panoramas have boxes and envelopes custom made form them. They take their storage very seriously.

The dark room smelled musky, probably because the staff print maker Jordi Calafell was in the process of creating set of prints for an exhibition. He explained that when he does prints of old photographs, he usually does two. The first is as faithful as possible to the artist's original vision, taking instruction from their notes, the original prints, and any other sources. The second is Jordi's own vision. In this way, he said, he feels like he's able to add something to the original work and keep the art a living thing.

We retreated from the back of the building out to the exhibit area where we were able to view an exhibit on Napoleon. No not that Napoleon, but rather Emilio Fernández Tiffon, a guy who started a portrait studio in 1852 that became one of the longest lasting studios in Spain, finally closing in 1966. Emilio took the name Napoleon because the French name was a sign of wealth and power. Emilio would take people's photo, then often paint either onto a print of the photo or using the portrait as a reference. We got to see a collection of his work, and it was quite good.

To end our day, we returned to the classroom we'd started in where Natasha and Ricard had gotten their hands onto some extremely old photos of Barcelona bound in books so old we had to wear white gloves while turning the pages. The pictures showed old panormaic views of the city. It was cool to compare them to the city as we've experienced it.  It felt somehow flatter or smaller in the old pictures, maybe because it was.

With that, our tour of the archive had come to a close. We were late for our trip to the new media exhibit at Santa Monica, so off we went. If you're still curious and want to find out more about the archive, you can check out their website, though you may need to translate it from Catalan.

  —Sam

Rephotography, Day 2: Sketching in Parc de la Cuitadella

  Saturday April 9th, the CAMS roadtrippers made the trek to Parc de la Cuitadella for some first hand  practice with rephotography- the process of rephotographing places represented in old photographs in order to examine the changes and similarities.

The day started with Ricard Martinez, photographer and founder of Arqueologia del Punt de Vista,  showing the group maps of where we were in relation to the city now and in the past. Parc de la Cuitadella was created for the 1888 Universal Exposition, and although many of the buildings no longer stand, the park is now a relaxation hotspot,  home to a zoo, three beautiful ponds, and walkways galore- good for walking, frolicking, and running.

We were given a print of an old photograph that was taken of a statue right near where we were standing, and our job was to figure out the exact point where it was originally taken. After walking in circles for a few minutes the vantage point was found and we were ready to move on.
 

  We split into groups of three for the exercise of the day. Each group was given another photograph and told to find the location where it was taken. We were also handed a large peice of paper and drawing supplies to sketch the new location in and around the old photograph.

Each group spent an hour drawing in their scene before grouping up again with everyone and showing off their artistic skills. Drawing the area around the photograph helped everyone to really pay attention to the subject and details, allowing them to focus on framing, and tying in the old with a new. This was the perfect exercise to get us ready to photograph next Saturday!

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

The Final Drawings!

 
 
-Kaitlin Randolph

Picturing Pictures: An Introduction to Rephotography

If you listen to much Jack Johnson, you may be familiar with his classic chorus "pictures of people taking pictures of people..." and so on - as irreverent and poppy as he may be, he's got something right.  Photography is a very self-reflexive medium, and perhaps one of the newest and most exciting trends right now is the field of Rephotography. 

On Monday evening, we had the pleasure of attending a presentation on rephotography by Arqueologia del Punt de Vista, a research and photography collective working here in Barcelona.  It is the first in a series of five sessions we will be conducting with them as a joint academic and artistic endeavor that brings together a variety of viewpoints, especially contrasting their perspectives as local photographers with ours as newly arrived cinema and media studies majors (and budding photographers, of course!).

Arqueologia del Punt de Vista is a 4-member non-profit organization based here in Spain whose primary focus is conducting research related to visual elements of the past – exploring connections between history and collective memory, how Spain conceived and conceives of the Franco regime, and other facets of the rephotographic method.  Three of the group’s four members were with us on Monday: Ricard martinez, the founder and guiding photographer of the project, Isidre Santacreu, an architect and photographer who spearheads the design of Arqueologia’s public installations of their work, and Natasha Christia, a Greek researcher and archeologist who works extensively with the theory of rephotography.

So what, you may be wondering, is rephotography?  To quote Natasha, it is “a reflexive tune that explores photography’s creation of time”, a creative and critical approach that “allows us to consider the in-between of the photograph”.  Simply put, rephotography is the (performative) act of taking a photograph of something that has already been recorded – usually photographically, but also that which has been mapped, drawn, filmed, and so on.  The basic principle is to record changes, as rephotography is inherently an invitation to comparison, an adding of our gaze to the gaze of other people who have been here before, an interrogation of viewpoint.  Our photographs in turn may be themselves re-photographed, making us we become part of a chain through time.  Photography, and rephotography, can allow us to position ourselves in respect to past and future.

The lecture, which Natasha presented with compelling fervor that made even some very complicated theory seem quite intuitive, outlined the history of the movement up till now and some of its most prominent and provocative practitioners, starting with the work of Edward Muybridge and working up to modern approaches by foundational rephotographer Mark Klett (who the Arqueologia team have worked with quite recently).  She discussed how rephotography can be urban, can concern the body, can work specifically with absence, can play with the liminal space between the original and the simulacrum, with a wealth of examples among contemporary and recent photographers’ works.

What Arqueologia del Punt de Vista has been doing in Barcelona over the last several years has been a series of installations in the city itself, spurred by a desire to create a direct connection between urban space/place and memory, memory and collective history.  Some of their works have included Repressio i Resistencia, Runa, Autoretrat, and most recently, Working Across Time (with Mark Klett).

Monday's meeting with Arqueologia del Punt de Vista was just the beginning of series of very exciting events that we will be engaging in during the remainder of our time in Barcelona - we will add our creative and critical powers to theirs in a joint project that will add our subjective point of view to the perpetual chain of time.  Starting on Saturday, we will have a rephotography workshop with the team, working from  old photographs and seeking out the precise vantage points from which they were taken, working with drawings and perception of space.  We can also look forward to two visits with the team (one to the Catalan Archives and one to the Library of Catalunya) that will allow us to explore the evolving vision of Barcelona through maps and aerial views, piecing together both historical perspectives and our own perspectives as newcomers to the city.  Most exciting, perhaps, is the walk we have planned with Ricard, which will see us actually tracing the historic July 19, 1936 walk of the photographer Augusti Centelles (the first day of the Spanish Civil War) through the careful reconstructing of negatives.  The walk will be both an experiment in rephotography and an exploration of history and place and image - about how we know what is happening around us, and how to interpret the world through photos.

Perhaps, as Isidre warned, it is true that “photographs are pre-mental; you will end up doing a photo-Barcelona that reflects the photo-Barcelona you have in mind” - but now that we are delving into rephotography, it seems that the tools for discovering a "true" Barcelona - even if that truth reflects, inevitably, our own subjective viewpoints - are at our fingertips.  –Anna Swanson