Berlin, February 1999
A piercing wind howls across the city stinging the faces of pedestrians on Friedrichstrasse the thoroughfare that has become the Fifth Avenue of re-united Berlin. Some joker has parked a Trabant in front of the Mercedes-Benz dealership wryly contrasting the crude East German car with the luxurious limousines synonymous with western affluence radiating self-satisfaction beneath the showroom lights. It’s cold, so bitter it’s a wonder anybody is out in such punitive weather. I have a reason. Ten years after the Berlin Wall came down I am retracing my footsteps, making a final shoot for a book about the re-unified city that I have photographed since 1983. That year in October I arrived in Berlin travelling with an American rock band Huey Lewis and the News, photographing a gig they had as part of a European tour. They played at “The Bunker” a former bomb shelter used as a venue. Huey didn’t like the gig, he didn’t like The Bunker and he really did not enjoy all those GI’s waving their miniature stars and stripes. I saw him later in the foyer of The Kempinski Hotel, his signature black jacket with silver flecks, slung over his shoulder,“ I’m leaving “ he said, this town is too gloomy for me and walked into the night, looking for the crew bus. I stayed on, moving to a cheap guest-house in Kreuzberg from where I could see the guard towers on the Eastern side and after dark the search lights plying the empty space known as the death strip. I wandered streets steeped in autumnal melancholy, juggling thoughts, photographing most everything; too much. Each corner I turned led to a cul-de-sac. Each street closed off by a wall daubed with political slogans, graffiti and murals about freedom, oppression and anarchy.

I crossed from West to East as a tourist taking the S Bahn that rattled and creaked into Alexander Platz station where I disembarked to pass through the checkpoint to the German Democratic Republic. A door flew open and I entered a cubicle with mirrored walls and ceiling. The door slammed shut. A uniformed man with an anaemic face stared at me from beneath a military cap resembling an inverted lampshade; clinical eyes searched the mirrors then scrutinised my passport. Something buzzed, the gate flew open and I was waved into the East. A moment of excitement. I was behind the Iron Curtain. Uncertain what to do or where to go I walked towards the giant telecommunications tower that dominates Alexanderplatz. The tower’s observation deck with its aerial perspective was an excellent vantage point to understand how the city had been cantonized. Looking down, the wall stretched away, a concrete noose encircling West Berlin.

This excursion to East Berlin was not the seminal photographic encounter I hoped for. I did not capture images poignantly describing an alternative society. Knowing what one wants to say about a subject is an elementary principle underpinning the making of meaningful pictures. Sometimes that knowledge evolves from extended experience of a place or situation, sometimes it comes from prior knowledge of an activity. My point of view was too vague. Alexanderplatz was forlorn and visually dull to my naive eye and movement restricted. I soon crossed back to the West where I felt free to photograph yet the visit roused memories and excited my imagination. Random wanderings around the divided city conjured up childhood memories from the sixties, reports about daring escapes from the east as well as tragic failed attempts to escape the communist bloc for the capitalist west. The frisson I felt as I walked the wall, the mood of the place left me wanting to be in Berlin. Huey had left town but I kept coming back.

‘Berlin’ by Roger Hutchings published by Motta Editore Milan 1999
Signed Copies can be purchased from the photographer
£22.00 plus pp.