Earlier, well, quite a while ago, our neighbor caught us in the hallway and announced that he was moving out. A few months ago he had already halfway indicated that he was looking for something different, in another part of the city and with a balcony and such, but I hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly. The two, who were obviously there to look at the old apartment and while we were standing with him in the hallway, at least smelled, let’s say ‘intense’. You can’t always say more about potential next-door neighbors. We will most likely not miss the drumming from above – but the apartments are just badly soundproofed – we must have all noticed that.
Anyways, we always have the earplugs with us and if you spend the night on the road under a mobile roof, then the background noise is completely different anyway. The early birdsong or the pounding rain, like last week when we spent our first night in the van – you just can’t beat it. We didn’t use the earplugs of course – thats another reason why you’re outside there. To get in touch with the world. And of course, as long as it’s warm and dry, while outside a storm is whipping first rain, then hail and a nasty west wind against the walls of the van. And the softly shaken van gave us a feeling of being on a boat – an expedition into new chapters.
This inevitably brings back memories of cool nights in tents spent as a child or teenager with friends on air mattresses and stuffed into thick sleeping bags. Sometimes wet from above AND below and full of anticipation even longing for ones warm bed at home. You spent countless days outside in the forest, by the sea with sand under your feet or with a wide view of the mountains in front of you. And thus collected the important images that one only collects in the heart. Images that we use today as a map, as an inner compass. Feelings, tastes that remind us of the most wonderful places in the world. They let us set out to collect many more and show us that we are on the right path. We still stand in special places, windswept, trying to capture their magic. We hold on to LIV and give ourselves the chance, with a little time, to discover the world through different eyes. Not via the digital screen on the cell phone or the camera, but without a viewfinder and with a pinhole of the self-made camera obscura. That grounds and calms. I could search forever for the perfect angle, climbing rocks or scooting around on my knees. I forget about all the other crap around me and know that the journey is worth it.
Sometimes we have to walk a long way with all the equipment. Our arms are stretched out by the heavy tripod, we carry cameras on our backs and across our shoulders, we don’t yet know which ones are used at that location. Every place is different. Wants to be looked at differently. And tells a completely different, unique story through each medium. One and the same motif, sometimes captured on negative film, sometimes on direct positive paper. Slide film, 35mm, medium or large format. I see the world as I like it. Or so. Or how it likes itself maybe. I am happy about the many things that you discover when you take different perspectives. When you step out of your comfort zone and maybe wrest a little bit of the magic out of the world. And if you have to spend a few hours in this one place, then I’m happy to do that. And when Frank says to me on the way to the van: “Hm, apartment with a balcony, we have the van and the whole world is our garden!” Then I can still just smile at him a little incredulously and be happy like a little kid that all the threads that we have been trying to keep spinning for a few years, despite all the adversities, are finally all woven together and give us the opportunity for a whole new way of making pictures and seeing the world somehow with different, with kinda new eyes…
