Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place vs. home

Posts from the ‘Austria’ category

Vienna: Holocaust Memorial by Rachel Whiteread

Where: Judenplatz, in Vienna’s Altstadt.
What: Holocaust Memorial, by Rachel Whiteread (2000).

How do you commemorate or memorialize the absent or missing? How should the void be acknowledged, recognized, and remembered? Does the act of constructing a physical monument “draw a line”, creating a physical manifestation of marking an end that gathers and wipes away all subsequent future responsibility for remembering?

In Vienna’s Old Town, what was unjustly and violently removed from the city’s long historical memory and cultural identity comes into shape at Judenplatz. Under the public square are ruins of the medieval synagogue destroyed in the pogrom of 1421 with hundreds of Jews driven out, hundreds killed by burning, and the community erased. Directly above these ruins is the Holocaust Memorial which attempts to generate experiences and memories to address the void left behind after the systematic murder of 65-thousand people.

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Frankurter Küche, Frankfurt kitchen, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, MAK Vienna, Vienna, Wien, Austria, Österreich, fotoeins.com

Vienna: Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky & the modern fitted kitchen

Who: Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky.
Key: 1st woman architect in Austria, designer of something we take entirely for granted.
Quote: “I developed the kitchen as an architect, not as a housewife.”

I always liked how cooking had well-defined endpoints: a desirable start, and a satisfying conclusion. I enjoy the process: the contemplation of “what to make,” the gathering of ingredients, the preparation, and naturally, the consumption. There might also be something to say about the duality of creation and annihilation …

That got me to thinking about kitchens as a critical unit of a home. Before the 20th-century, the wealthy could afford to have staffed kitchens; everybody else had access to no kitchen or an unsafe unhygienic kitchen in a building separate to their living quarters. The assumed universality of a kitchen within a home is a 20th-century concept and implementation that sought to overcome social and economic class. The design of a modern kitchen invites repeated patterns of movement and action around where cookware, utensils, condiments, glassware, etc. are stored and where the central focus of cooking activity takes place.

For everyone who spends any time in a kitchen, we have Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (MSL) to thank.

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Einöden, Gasthof Hauserwirt, Wörgl, Tyrol, Tirol, Kufstein, Austria, Österreich, fotoeins.com

Small towns in the Austrian countryside

Above/featured: Bovine goodness with Gasthof Hauserwirt in the background, in Ein̦den at the outskirts of W̦rgl Р13 May 2018.

Österreichische Dörfer auf dem Land

Spending a few weeks exploring Austria in spring between peak winter and summer seasons got me to examine a variety of artistic and cultural aspects, including:

•   a search for Erwin Schrödinger’s grave,
•   a century of Vienna Modernism,
•   a day-trip from Vienna to Bratislava with a boat on the Danube, and
•   looking for modern Salzburg beyond Mozart and The Sound of Music,

Because I’m all about trains and buses in Europe, there were many towns encountered: some passed by, and others planned and visited. The following examples of small towns in Austria includes a generous portion of mountains from the Austrian Alps.

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Salzburg Walk of Modern Art (2018)

Above: “Sphaera” by Stephan Balkenhol: Salzburg Kapitelplatz – 22 May 2018.

Salzburg is a well-known historical city in north-central Austria next to the border with Germany. For a different way of examining the city that goes beyond the history of the Habsburgs and the music of Mozart, the Walk of Modern Art allows visitors and residents to walk through parts of the city for a mix of historical and contemporary perspectives at street-level and from the cliffs above. The art pieces are placed throughout the city’s Old Town to coincide with key landmarks and sights. The city of Salzburg also provides information about the walk. UNESCO inscribed Salzburg’s Old Town as World Heritage Site in 1996.

Thankfully, there’s more to Salzburg than “The Sound of Music” (♫).

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Belvederegarten, Marmorsaal, Oberes Belvedere, Unteres Belvedere, Belevedere Museum, Belvedere Garten, Marble Hall, Upper Belvedere, Lower Belvedere, Vienna, Wien, Oesterreich, Austria, fotoeins.com

Vienna: urban frame (2018)

Above/featured: Belvedere Garden, north from Marble Hall in Upper Belvedere to Lower Belvedere and beyond to St. Stephen’s Cathedral at left-centre – 19 May.

It’s easy to reduce a city to stereotypes, distilling landmarks to short paragraph summaries designed for easy consumption.

Some might say: you’re making things too complicated; they’ve got to be simpler. That misguided sentiment needlessly and carelessly minimizes the diversity and complexity of a city, her people, and the infrastructure through which citizens reside, navigate, and thrive. Although I chased after traces of Otto Wagner throughout Vienna, I’m also interested in illuminating the city as reflections from past and present and as glimpses of resident and visitor.

Vienna is an exceptional city

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