color

Oct. 2017, Late Afternoon

Sometimes…

Sometimes I lose track of my photos for a while, sometimes I don't feel like sifting through and editing them right away, sometimes they gather dust on the hard drive waiting to be rediscovered at some point down the line.

It's been 4 years since I took these photos in downtown Frankfurt - without a face mask, in the old days, long before the Corona virus. How much life has changed since then, how little we have been aware of the freedom to go anywhere, to have a coffee in the sun, to meet friends...

I love the late afternoons, when the low sun conjures slowly moving shadows in the urban canyons, colors suddenly light up and are swallowed up elsewhere, and reflections of large glass fronts create surreal illuminations.

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The New Frankfurt I

Westhausen

Although I am living near Frankfurt for many years, I don't really know this city. My small trip to “Siedlung Westhausen” was a positive surprise, Westhausen welcomed me, open, colorful and more spacious than I had expected.

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Westhausen is one of several settlements planned by Ernst May (1886 - 1970), a German architect and city planner. In the context of a housing shortage, May assembled a powerful staff of progressive architects and initiated the large-scale housing development program “New Frankfurt” in 1925. May's developments were remarkable for the time for being compact, semi-independent, well-equipped with community elements like playgrounds, schools, theatres, and common washing areas. For the sake of economy and construction speed May used simplified, prefabricated forms.

Wide-Open Sky

It’s more than a year ago now. We spent a day on the Wasserkuppe, a large plateau formation at an elevation of nearly 1.000m and the highest peak in the Rhön Mountains. Near the summit there is an airfield used by gliding clubs and pilots of light aircrafts and some crowded restaurants.

I spent the hours walking aimlessly around the plateau, the sun on my skin, the fresh air clearing my mind. Disappearing between the hikers, roamers and visitors, going unnoticed under the wide-open sky.