Tag Archives: germany

Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Zigaretten

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Zigaretten
A cigarette vending machine along a street near Heidelberg, Germany

Zigaretten. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

A cigarette vending machine along a street near Heidelberg, Germany.

I cannot say if these things are still around in Germany, but they were back in 2016, much to my surprise. (I haven’t seen anything like them in the USA in years.) This is another “rediscovered” photograph that I came across while going through older files. One side effect of that is that I’m not quite exactly sure where I made the photograph! I think it was in a small village up the Neckar River from Heidelberg.

One challenge that I like to play with is making photographs out of subjects that seem superficially very mundane, here a vending machine attached to a wall. But there are a few layers of “what else” this photograph is. I contend that the play of light and shadow is both compositionally interesting and actually kind of “pretty.” And the subject itself makes me think about how times have changed from when I was younger and smoking was ubiquitous.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel

Heidelberg Thingstätte

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Heidelberg Thingstätte
An outdoor theater with a history dating to the 1930s in the hills above Heidelberg, Germany.

Heidelberg Thingstätte. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An outdoor theater with a history dating to the 1930s in the hills above Heidelberg, Germany.

This photograph has been sitting on my computer for months as I’ve wondered what the heck to write about it. I’m still not sure of the best way to address what it is or its history, partly due to the fact that my actual knowledge of its background is not that deep and because that background at least seems more than a bit fraught. (You can find a good primer by going to the wikipedia entry and then to the related entry on “Thingspiele.”) Basically, this facility and others like it were created in Germany in the 1930s as an expression of some combination of nationalism and Nazism as I understand it.

It is a strange and sobering experience to come upon such a place, especially if you were, like us, unaware of its existence before you arrived. Aside from films from that era (and modern films that channeled some of the imagery, including Indiana Jones movies) this is outside our experience. As I recall, before we arrived here there may have been some nervous mention of the “Nazi amphitheater,” but I didn’t get it until we walked into the place from the area of the stage and looked up at the gigantic amphitheater. We climbed the stairs, exited at the top, and continued on to a much older architectural relic where we remained as the afternoon turned to evening.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Stolpersteine, Heidelberg

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Stolpersteine, Heidelberg
Sidewalk memorials to the memory of German Jews who were victims the Holocaust.

Stolpersteine, Heidelberg. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sidewalk memorials to the memory of German Jews who were victims the Holocaust.

This photograph has been sitting on my computer for several months now, and I have been debating when and how to post it. It isn’t “the usual thing” for me to post, but there you go. I’m not an expert on the Stolpersteine (wikipedia says “literally ‘stumbling stone,” metaphorically ‘stumbling block’.”) so I’m relying on some material I have found online plus some context provided to me by people I know who live in the areas where they are found. (You can read more about them here, including some of the controversies about their installation.) In front of homes, shops, all kinds of buildings you fine these plates indicating that “Here lived…” a specific person who was deported or killed in the Holocaust, thus de-anonymizing the effects of that horror and tying it closely to places where people seem to live normal lives today.

One reason I have been thinking about the Stolpersteine is that here in the US we have been engaging in a (sometimes absurd) debate about how to best recognize and come to terms with very difficult and awful parts of the history of our great country, in particular the enslavement of Africans and the long and ongoing oppression of people of color. An element of this has been the call to remove monuments to slavers and traitors who fought a war agains this country. The counter cry is “Don’t take our history away.” The history should, of course, remain and be readily visible and available. But glorifying the perpetrators of that history is another matter entirely. It might not be a bad idea to have our own version of the “stumbling stones,” perhaps marking the places where enslaved people were sold, where post-Civil War atrocities took place, and more.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel

Bavarian Door

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Bavarian Door
Inscriptions and hardware on the of a small building in a Bavarian forest.

Bavarian Door. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Inscriptions and hardware on the of a small building in a Bavarian forest.

Some years back when we visited Europe we managed to meet up with a big group of extended family members near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, where we rented a big farm house (or so it seemed to us) for a week. In addition to doing all the usual family stuff, we visited a number of nearby sights, from some in Bavaria to the not-too-distance city of Salzburg, Austria.

Königsee, part of the Berchtesgaden National Park was very close by, so we took that famous electric boats up the lake to the landing at Kirsche St. Bartholoma. It was a nice day so we decided to take a hike to the Eiskapelle, a place at the base of a gigantic ice chute coming from the upper reaches of Watzmann, the highest peak in the neighborhood. Along the way we passed this small building, which I think may be a chapel of some sort, and I was intrigued by the rustic metal fittings, the many carvings, and the color.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.