On Friday 7th Feb 2020, the talk at Bangor & North Down Camera Club was given by a group of the club’s own members. The talk was entitled ‘Currywurst, the Reichstag, a Wall and the Holocaust Memorial’. The seven members who spoke this evening were part of a group of nine who together travelled to Berlin for a photographic trip in May 2019. Tonight’s speakers gave us some insight into their experience of visiting Berlin, and they showed us many of the photographs they had taken on the trip.
The first speaker was Peter Hughes who not only showed us a selection of his own images from the trip but set the scene for the evening by showing some short videos of Berlin taken in 1936 and 1945, before and after the second world war respectively. The former showed a thriving city, the latter a scene of almost total destruction.
Our second section was an audio-visual presentation by Gerry Coe, which gave an overview of the trip, and showed iPhone images taken by Gerry, of many aspects of Berlin, in particular portraits of street people which had been enhanced by creative black and white processing.
The next part of the talk, given by Trevor Craig focused on the Berlin Wall. Trevor discussed the history of the wall, before showing examples of the wide variety of art and graffiti which adorn the few remaining sections.
Ray Magill continued the evening focusing on aspects of Berlin which he found interesting, especially the Berliner Dom, the city’s famous cathedral. Ray showed us images of the interior and other views across Berlin taken from the cathedral’s roof. Ray also showed other iconic images of Berlin including the famous Brandenburg Gate, and the modern dome of the Reichstag parliament building.
Noel Maitland showed a wide variety of images from Berlin, including the city’s famous Tiergarten Zoo and the very modern architecture from the Potsdamer Platz area. Noel also had a number of photographs of the other members of the group as they travelled around on the cities very efficient transport systems.
Hugh Rooney showed a number of architectural images, discussing how the photographs had been taken and processed as monochrome prints. Berlin is a city rich in architecture despite the level of destruction which occurred during the second world war.
The final speaker was Alastair Bell who showed some other aspects of the city, including the famous TV Tower at Alexanderplatz, the city’s tallest building and a symbol of the former East Berlin. Alastair also showed us examples of Berlin street photography, and some images of the iconic Trabant cars from East Germany.
Our thanks to all of tonight’s speakers for sharing their different perspectives on this fascinating and cosmopolitan city.
Next week we have another guest speaker, Kieran Murray will show his images from a recent trip to India.