Pieces of Berlin!

Documentation of a Metropolis!

If you are living in Berlin, you must know Pieces of Berlin, and if you don’t live there this is the perfect way to get to know the real Berlin. Through the beautiful analog prints of Florian Fleischauer you experience the constant changes and the real spirit of this wonderful metropolis.

KALTBLUT: How did you decide to start Pieces of Berlin?

Flo: When I moved to Berlin in 2007, I always had my old folding camera in my bag, whenever I liked a spot I took a photo – so everything started a little bit like a diary. I didn’t know at the beginning, although I fell immediately in love with the city,
how long I was gonna stay here. I just wanted to document all these beautiful places. After collecting a huge bunch of pictures I published a small book and I got a bit annoyed by “just” capturing places – so what makes Berlin most multifaceted: the people around. At that time I got into this blogging thingy and I thought that might be a nice combination.

KALTBLUT: Why analog? What do you believe is the relationship between Berlin and film photography? How does it capture the spirit of the city?

Flo: I am pretty stuck in analog photography:) I love the whole process. When I am out taking photos for pob, i always use one film, 12 photos, for each person I ask I take only one photo, then bringing a freshly licked film to the lab, waiting excited for its results, picking up the negatives… that’s lovely!
Using old cameras, for instance, makes it possible playing with coincidences, failures – you get incidences of light, shifting colors, you can’t control them. You get a kind of dreamy result of a picture, which looks in my opinion a bit like memories you have in your head. That’s a fact which fits for me to Berlin and it’s constantly changing, evanescent. A beautiful wasteland which you capture today, might be a construction place tomorrow…

The Berliners are honest and harsh

All pictures are analogue 6×6 photos and are available as limited c-prints.
www.piecesofberlin.com

KALTBUT: You must know Berlin like no other. Which pieces of Berlin are your favourites? I love your dead places series, can you tell me about those too?

Flo: One of my favorites is a piece of vermeer van deer spree and the wastelands series.
They are disappearing more and more, the big sell-out, that makes me sad… The “dead places” are fascinating me because of a very simple reason. These are spots where time stands still, surrounded by a metropolis which is changing every day.
For example the abandoned Iraqi embassy, you enter that place and you find old typewriters and official papers from the 80ies just laying on the floor. There is a special atmosphere, which I can’t describe.

KALTBLUT: Do you have any other cities you like? How does Berlin and Berliners differ from all the rest?

Flo: There are plenty of cities I dig, like Vienna, where I studied and very good friends of mine are living there, or Genova… and there are a lot of places I would like to discover, but there is no place other than Berlin I would like to live now
Berlin is still a place where you can go and try what u would like to do, or how you would like to live, although this is becoming more and more difficult because of raising rents and so on…anyways that’s a thing which makes Berlin very special for me.
The Berliners are honest and harsh – that’s a big difference to Vienna.

Interview by Amanda M. Jansson