Cinematic Nostalgia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoAGxQw0biM&has_verified=1

The Maids of Honor

The projectionist as ever-present observer

‘Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.’ –Woody Guthrie

The Lady of Shalott, Alfred Tennyson

Maria, "The Lady of Shalott, poem by Tennyson about a woman who is cursed, she cannot look out a window or she will die. The view of her lover causes her to look out the window and she dies. View out of the tower to something forbidden and dangerous, but ultimately exciting and desirable ... Cinema? Street?

Alfred Tennyson, Lord Tennyson. 1809–1892

The Lady of Shalott

PART I


ON either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot; 5
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 10
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers, 15
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow-veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd 20
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand? 25
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly 30
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower'd Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers ''Tis the fairy 35
Lady of Shalott.'

PART II


There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay 40
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott. 45

And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot: 50
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, 55
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue 60
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights, 65
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights,
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed; 70
'I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady of Shalott.

PART III


A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves, 75
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field, 80
Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily 85
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott. 90

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot. 95
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd; 100
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river 105
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
'Tirra lirra,' by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room, 110
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side; 115
'The curse is come upon me!' cried
The Lady of Shalott.

PART IV


In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining, 120
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;

Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote 125
The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse—
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance—
With a glassy countenance 130
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott. 135

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right—
The leaves upon her falling light—
Thro' the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot: 140
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy, 145
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken'd wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot;
For ere she reach'd upon the tide 150
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery, 155
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame, 160
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer; 165
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, 'She has a lovely face;
God in His mercy lend her grace, 170
The Lady of Shalott.'

End of Gunnar Asplund (possibly)

Peter Blundell Jones, Gunnar Asplund (Hong Kong: Phaidon, 2006) 106-109

More Asplund

It bridges the journey from' theatre to cinema, from Classicism classicism, a term that, when applied generally, means clearness, elegance, symmetry, and repose produced by attention to traditional forms. It is sometimes synonymous with excellence or artistic quality of high distinction, to proto-Modernity, from functionality to myth making. On entering, you go down a flight of stairs to the foyer whose walls were originally dark green. As Simo Paavilainen Simo Paavilainen (born 1944) is a Finnish architect, and Dean and Professor of Architecture at Helsinki University of Technology Department of Architecture.

Paavilainen studied architecture at Helsinki University of Technology, qualifying as an architect in 1975. says, 'In the middle of the greenness stands a brightly-lit white walled building with cornices and red velvet doorways -- a white building in a deep green space. The visitor believes that he is entering a building, but inside he finds a moon and a deep blue arch of sky'. The celestial globes celestial globe. A model of the celestial sphere showing the positions of the stars and other celestial bodies.

Noun 1. celestial globe - a globe that is a spherical model of the heavens which used to hang in the auditorium auditorium

Portion of a theater or hall where an audience sits, as distinct from the stage. The auditorium originated in the theaters of ancient Greece, as a semicircular seating area cut into a hillside, have long been removed (but, like most other disassembled parts of the original design, they have been carefully stored).

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Gunnar+Asplund%27s+Skandia+Cinema+in+Stockholm+is+one+of+the+first+and...-a072302581

Gunnar Asplund's Skandia Cinema

Gunnar Asplund's Skandia

By Leo Gullbring
You slip into a cinema, leaving the blackish grey city-walk, heavy doors closing behind you. Inside you're welcomed by warm, attuned colours, getting your ticket at the box. Lights fading, shadows moving over the screen, searching for an empty seat. And under the introductory titles, a flicker of a memory, the scene in Jean-Jacques Beineix's Moon in the gutter, starring Nastassja Kinski in a shiny red dress in a shiny red car, Gérard Depardieu a heavily set dock worker, just standing there in the dark but nevertheless overdone stage-set, the uplit billboard an enticing exclamation mark: 'Try another world'. And you try it for two hours, once again ready to dispute what life really is about. And sure enough, going to the movies, leaving the trite everyday behind you, triggers your dreams: yes, you wanted something more, and you'll do it, sure as hell!



But this is not a common cinema. This is what going to the movies once was. This is what cinemas really should be about. Still. Seventysix years later. Take a closer look. The exterior reluctantly tells you this is a movie-place, the building itself originally a palace built at the border of the expanding citycore, just a few yards from August Strindberg's 'Blue Tower'. But well inside another cityscape opens up, admittedly on another scale, but nevertheless with a feeling of streets, narrow passages and a small room which feels like a starlit park. Indoors mingle with outdoor sequences of rooms over limestone floors and marble walls, all of it multiplied in mirrors. From the promenoir with its dark green and white colours you get a glimpse of the lavishly decorated auditorium behind innumerable doors. But first you better check out the upper floor. Take one of the steep staircases which under the starkly coloured frescoes by Leander Engström leads up to the balconies which frames the saloon on either side, classical motifs abounding along the side-gallery barriers and the upper-circle canopies. Here you can hide away in boxes and oldfashioned sofas (which certain ladies are said to have been taking advantage of), looking down into the elongated saloon, all this red fluffy velvet surrounding you, and a cool blue vaulted ceiling above, letting your mind soar into nothingness.

This garish example of the heroic age of movie palace architecture is one of the gems you can find among quite a number of preserved cinemas in Sweden. It quite matches the word of Gene Kelly who said that 'I can remember a time when where we went to the movies was just as important as the movies we went to see.' The atmospheric kind you might stumble in on in the states, masterly executed by architects like John Eberson, did never really catch on in Scandinavia. But theater-like interiors did proliferate beginning as early as 1904 when Stockholm got its first permanent cinema, only some eight years after Paris, London and Berlin. And this is no plaster or mailordered stucco with signs at the projection box saying: 'Please do not turn on the clouds until the show starts. Be sure the stars are turned off when leaving.' These are all real materials, just look at the remarkable textiles which required some fifty seamstresses occupied in doing appliqué and embroidery with gold wire and pearls on velvet and silver fabric.

That Gunnar Asplund was commissioned to do Skandia, which opened up 1923, was no exception. Do take a look at Röda Kvarn and Göta Lejon from 1815, Palladium from 1918, or China's orientalist interior from 1928 (to know more about these unique places, try cinema-historian Kjell Furbergs site: www.furberg.nu). The cinema had already acquired a reputation as an essential part of civilisation, with weekly newsreels and a repertoire where Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller were to prepare the ground for international stars like Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman. Well-known architects as well as artists were commissioned to add to the imaginary. Asplund hadn't got in contact with modernism yet, but the simple straightforward lay-out of Skandia is somewhat promising, and his City Library is already under way, a masterpiece of the classical announcing the modern. His inspiration for this overly decorated interior with its classical vocabulary was to be found in his Italian journey less than ten years earlier. The monochromatic painted walls with their intricate borders reminds of Pompeii. But this is surely more immortality than sin, although snakes in brass are present at the end of railings wreathed in red leather. The freely hanging lamps covered with grey silk are not yet put back in place, but they are a reminiscence of the Greek Theatre Asplund visited in Taormina, where he and his companion got lost in a catholic festivity. And what couldn't be more befitting? Isn't cinema still the very worship of semi-gods and saints among pop-corn and soft drink debris?

At its heydays statues of Adam and Eve flanked the screen, and the backlit curtain really promised paradise. With 70 mm the proscenium was moved forward, but the grandiloquent romanticism is still in place. And this very movie which flickers on the screen fits right into the place anyway. It plays with the same fleshy red colours, the same sensual stamina as Skandia itself. David Cronenberg's eXistenZ questions reality as well as virtual reality. Jennifer Jason Leigh as the programmer Allegra Geller embarks on a roadmovie into a game of her own making, where your own fantasy, your fears and dreams are the very stuff this virtuality is made off, which is even worse than The Blair Witch Project.. And Cronenberg is presenting a kind of existential propaganda, a fear of detachment, of loosing what makes us human, a dread that the division between body and soul becomes a reality, that the real is divorced from the virtual. You've got no rules in this virtuality, you might kill the next waiter you meet, why not?, it might push the game forward, or are we outside the game now, oops, I shot him, was he real? But Cronenberg is fascinated anyway, a game where the only restrictions are the players themselves, where their senses are triggered way out of the ordinary when they plug this umbilical-like cord into that moist little hole in their backs, experiencing a virtuality more real than reality. Instead of our own impotent bodies we immortalize ourselves in this new reality. Fiction defeats reality. And there you sit in this very cinema, a dream in itself, and Cronenberg is asking you, 'do you know where the fiction really ends?'

But Skandia doesn't work for every movie, the interior is way too lavishly decorated, way too bourgeois in its stylised classicism, and those precious textiles are way too hard to preserve. Asplund did opt for this semi-athmosperic romanticism. But is this really what dreams are made of, all this crimson velvet, all these archaic motives? Compare this to Kubrick who is said to have had a New York cinema's interior painted matt black for the premiere of Barry Lyndon, 'cause the existing colours were to vivid. Or David Cronenberg'seXistenZ which seems to aspire to a kind of future cinema where you plug that umbilical cord directly into your bio-port, deep into your nervous system, entering the movie itself, where space is nothing else than a property of your own mind, bereft of all exterior embellishment. Flamman, conceived by Uno Åhrén whom helped out Asplund on Skandia, was built just a few years later, but had done away with sumptuous romanticism and is already modernist with its freely sweeping contours, icy-blue ceiling and neon-signs, dead on target with the Stockholm Exhibition 1930 and ready for sound. This sober elegant space was far more in style with the movies and Kubrick's 2001 wouldn't have been out of place, had only the cinema itself survived.

Skandia did survive, although the cinema had a hard time in the '70s and was threatened with plans for a restaurant only a year ago, a fate of some other gems from the heydays of the cinemagoing. Triangelfilm, a small Swedish distributor, stepped in and are now in charge. And while Mattias Nohrborg shows the same kind of enlightened pessimism as Ingmar Bergman, deploring the high lease as an obstacle. But Nohrborg will surely fight for the restoration of Skandia. He says he want to get the old Wurlitzer back in place, so that old silent movies can be shown again. The only feasible solution is nonetheless to have Skandia declared an historic landmark, otherwise this neo-liberal creed that everything must be measured in money terms might do away with one of the most precious gems in Stockholm. Ad notwithstanding all its pro and cons Skandia is not meant to be a museum, although that might be the aim of a municipality stuck on a retro-nostalgic policy regarding the city. Skandia will show the major movie releases as well as having a cineclub, and why not fitting it out with THX and maybe digital projecting?

Deplorable enough SF, the largest film-distributor of Sweden and once Asplund's client and still the owner of the interior, are reluctant to help out. And this is all the more unjust since they got themselves a new movie-palace right in centre on extremely favourable terms to the detriment of the tax-payers. The Sergel-cinecomplex might be far better than the cinemas of the '80s, but shows nonetheless a commercialized lovelessness in its contempt for the public. Here art is commissioned to add credence to the most dysfunctional functionalist-pastisch one can ever imagine, ever more so a shame since Sergel was conceived by the city architect himself. SF goes for the money, too rare on quality though. Asplund leaves a heritage in need of a care as careful as for the movies themselves. At the end of the century this is a velvety jewell Stockholm can be immensely proud of, and just the kind of place where to see certain very special movies.


http://www.calimero.se/skandia.html

Zumthor, Atmospheres

Peter Zumthor has in many ways become the cliche of a phenomenological architecture,however one cannot deny that there is a certain "atmosphere" or mystique to the way material and experience are considered in his work. Reading the transcription of his lecture delivered on June 1st at the Festival of Literature and Music in East-Westphalia-Lippe (somewhere that has previously escaped my notice, but in fact appears quite intriguing!) one cannot help but be pulled into Zumthor's thinking, his description, his architecture.

"We are capable of immediate appreciation, of a spontaneous emotional response, of rejecting things in a flash. That is very different from linear thought, which we are equally capable of , and which I love too; thinking our way from A to B in a mentally organised fashion. ... The first movement of Brahm's viola sonata, when the viola comes in - just two seconds and we're there!"



Zumthor on cinema,

"Where nothing is trying to coax you away, where you can simply be. ... Guidance, preparation, stimulation, the pleasant surprise, relaxation..."

labyrinths

"Bioy Casares had had dinner with me that evening and we became lengthily engaged in a vast polemic concerning the composition of a novel in the first person, whose narrator would omit or disfigure the facts and indulge in various contradictions which would permit a few readers - very few readers - to perceive an atrocious or banal reality. From the remote depths of the corridor, the mirror spied upon us."

"Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in "Labyrinths", p.27


"One of the schools of Tlon goes so far as to negate time: it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as a present memory."

Ibid, p.34


"The methodical fabrication of hronir (says the Eleventh volume) has performed prodigious services for archaeologists. It has made possible the interrogation and even the modification of the past, which is now no less plastic and docile that the future."

Ibid, p.38

Element, bar, tower, longhall, screen.

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind."

Extract from Burnt Norton by TS Eliot (part of the Four Quartets series)

See also the fascinating life and work of the somewhat eccentric John William Dunne, an aeronautical engineer by trade, and speculator on non-linear time by hobby, born in Co. Kildare in 1875.

(Image courtesy of: http://acepilots.com/airplanes/country/british/dunne-biplane/)

party wall

party wall = circulation

diurnal/nocturnal

fireplace

shopfront

Cell, secret lives part II

Cells Vol.1 & Vol.2 by Jean-Pierre Attal

Entre art et archéologie sociale, le photographe parisien Jean-Pierre Attal observe l'architecture des bureaux contemporains. Between art and social archeology, the Parisian photographer Jean-Pierre Attal observes contemporary office architecture. Derrière ces façades de verre, comme dans une ruche, la vie se dévoile, grouillante, innombrable, anonyme. Behind the facades of glass, like a beehive, life unfolds, swarming innumerable anonymous.

Sur cette série, Jean-Pierre Attal précise: In this series, Jean-Pierre Attal says:

« L'architecture des bureaux actuels ayant évolué dans le sens d'une plus grande transparence, je décide en 2007 d'explorer de nouveau ce terrain favorable à l'extension de mon travail d'archéologie sociale de la strate urbaine. Ces photographies grand format appréhendent la réalité d'individus étroitement liés à l'architecture contemporaine. "The architecture of the existing offices has evolved in the direction of greater transparency, I decided in 2007 to explore this new ground supported the extension of my work of social archeology of the urban strata. These large photographs format apprehend the reality of individuals closely linked to contemporary architecture. Elles fouillent le monde du travail tertiaire à travers les ouvertures vitrées des tours de bureaux contemporains. They searched the world of tertiary work across window openings contemporary office towers. C'est dans une très grande proximité qu'elles donnent à voir ces empilements d'étages saturés de salariés, révélant l'activité frénétique d'une ruche en pleine effervescence. Les « open spaces » deviennent alors totalement accessibles et dévoilent les détails d'un univers standardisé qui habituellement nous échappent. Dans le chaos architectural, c'est finalement la récurrence et l'obsédante répétition qui conduisent à l'évanouissement des êtres sous « X ». It is in very close proximity they are to see these piles of floors saturated with employees, revealing the frenetic activity of a hive of excitement. The "open spaces" become fully accessible and reveal the details a world standard, which usually escapes us. In the architectural chaos, it is ultimately the recurrence and the obsessive repetition that lead to the vanishing of beings in "X".


http://muuuz.com/2010/04/07/alveoles-vol-1-vol-2-par-jean-pierre-attal/en/

Alan's Corner!

Some excerpts from Alan's dissertation, "Cinema and Architecture".

"Cinema has the ability to focus images outlining specific conditions of emotional human interaction with space."

"The fragments glimpsed in peripheral vision, the context of where one has just come from; lunch with a friend at a place back down the street on the right opposite, a bookshop that smelled of coffee, the memory of the space or threshold you have just passed still lingering and adding to the scene, the breeze coming in the door behind you - these are the separating elements and point to the possible failings of the medium of film as a tool for questioning architecture."

"It has been said that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. It would be more correct to say that the whole is something else than the sum of its parts, because summing is a meaningless procedure, whereas the whole-part relationship is meaningful ... The result is qualitatively distinguishable from each component element viewed separately"
Kurt Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology

Hejduk's narratives

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/John+Hejduk.+%28Reviews:+New+York%29-a095676031


http://www.architectureweek.com/2000/0726/news_2-1.html

The Poetics of Architecture
from Mask of Medusa, by John Hejduk

I was interested in the poetics of architecture, in that which only the architect can give.
Everyone else can give everything else, but it's the only thing thay can't give that interests me. I'm not an ambiguous architect; I deal with fabrications, with clarities.... the forms are there, they don't have double meanings, they're singular, any one should be able to look
at them. The wall itself is the most "present" condition possible. Life has to do with walls; we're continuously going in and out, back and forth and through them. A wall is the quickest, the thinnest, the thing we're always transgressing, and that is why I see it as the
"present," the most surface condition. The painter starts with the real world and works toward abstraction, and when he's finished with a work it is abstracted from the so-called real world. But architecture takes two lines. The architect starts with the abstract world, and
due to the nature of his work, works toward the real world. The significant architect is one who, when finished with a work, is as close to that original abstraction as he could possibly be... and that is also what distinguishes architects from builders.

Perspectives

Travels in the Scriptorium

"My head would fill with images of my wife and daughter, and again and again I would see their mud-splattered bodies being lowered into the ground, again and again I would see their naked limbs entwined among the limbs of other corpses in the hole, and suddenly the darkness of the house would become too much to bear. I would venture out into public places, hoping to break the spell of those images in the noise and tumult of crowds. I frequented taverns and alehouses, and it was in one of those establishments that I did the most damage to myself and my reputation."

pp.44-45



"The Confederation... The Con-fed-e-ra-tion... It's all very simple, isn't it? Just another name for America. Not the United States as we know it, but a country that has evolved in another way, that has another history. But all the trees, all the mountains, all the prairies of that country stand exactly where they do in ours. The rivers and oceans are identical. Men walk on two legs, see with two eyes, and touch with two hands. They think double thoughts, and speak out of both sides of their mouths at once."

p.81


"It will never end. For Mr. Blank is one of us now, and struggle though he might to understand his predicament, he will always be lost. I believe I speak for all his charges when I say he is getting what he deserves - no more, no less. Not as a form of punishment, but as an act of supreme justice and compassion. Without him, we are nothing, but the paradox is that we, the figments of another mind, will outlive the mind that made us, for once we are thrown into the world, we continue to exist forever, and our stories go on being told, even after we are dead."

p.129

Zoli

Image via http://www.flickr.com/photos/howzey/3296670987/


"I had for some years considered myself to be Czechoslovakian but, in retrospect, I was too English for that, too Irish to be fully English, and too Slovakian to be in any way Irish. Translation had always got in the way of definition."
p.97

An interesting take on the stranger?


" 'I want to go home,' she said. She put her head against the wall and I felt privy to her sadness. It was, of course, the oldest idea: home. To her it meant silence. I tried to take her arm but she turned away."
p.103



"Always the feeling that they were looking right through me, past me, anxious to be with anybody but themselves. The way they smoked, as if it would never belong to them."
p.171



"It had always been, when Swann was around, the time of evening that promised most brightness. Into the dark lobby. Up the stairs. Past the waterstains on the walls. The air hard with cigarette smoke. Swann would flick a lighter for them to find their way. Through the swinging door. A few heads turned. Swann liked to think that they were already stepping into saloon territory. They stood for the national anthem, then sat against the hard-backed seats and waited for their eyes to adjust. "
p.188

A beautiful description of the threshold of the cinema, of the journey from real to fictive space.



"It startles her, the ease with which she has crossed from one place into another, the landscape wholly alien and yet so much the same."
p.214



"In the hotel glass, a reflection startles her, her grey hair, the bright dress, the shrunken bend of her back. To have come all this way and see herself like this. She pushes back through the revolving doors."
p.343

Confronting the physical manifestation of oneself to enter (see 'shopfront' post)

site strategy

shopfront

fireplace

Beginning to understand the mysteries of fireplace construction...

garden wall

Berlin again...

Kino International on Karl-Marx-Allee, early morning walk in Berlin.

For more: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2363