Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place vs. home

Posts from the ‘Urban Photography’ category

Berlin U5-Museumsinsel: Mozart, Schinkel, & Dudler

Above: Museumsinsel U-Bahn station entry-exit ‘A’. Photo, 17 May 2025 (P15).

The Berlin U-Bahn metro station Museumsinsel adjacent to the world renowned Museum Island is located on the U5 line which connects the city’s central station (Hauptbahnhof) with Alexanderplatz and the city’s eastern neighbourhoods. Construction for the station began in 2012 and lasted over 8 years. For the station interior at track level, architect Max Dudler was inspired by Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s 1815–1816 design of the stage for the Mozart opera “Die Sauberflöte” (The Magic Flute). For the appearance of the Queen of the Night, Schinkel imagined a large dome-like space like the overhead starry night sky. Over each of the two tracks in the U-Bahn station, Dudler designed a dark blue barrel-shaped vault embedded with thousands of white point-sources of light.

The fully-completed U5 extension from Hauptbahnhof to Alexanderplatz opened to the public on 4 December 2020, which at long last connected the Hauptbahnhof with Berlin’s U-Bahn city transport system. The Museumsinsel station on the U5 line opened on 9 July 2021. In addition to the city’s bus network, the station now allowed visitors to use the U-Bahn metro to reach the Museum Island complex, inscribed by UNESCO as World Heritage Site in 1999.

Artist and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) has his “fingerprints” on many of the city’s early- to middle 19th-century architecture, including in the immediate vicinity of the station the Neue Wache (New Guard House), Schlossbrücke (Castle Bridge), Friedrichswerder Church, Bauakademie (Building Academy), and the Altes Museum (Old Museum).


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My Berlin: Wrapped Reichstag at night, 30 years on

Above: “Wrapped Reichstag 1995–2025” light show.

In 1995, the artist duo Christo & Jeanne-Claude carried out a bold but contentious project by covering Berlin’s landmark Reichstag parliament building. Plans for the project had taken over 20 years, even though the artwork had always meant to be temporary and all expenses had been covered without corporate sponsors. Over 5 million visited in a period of 12 days in the summer of 1995 to look at the undulating “silver dream” in the German capital city. The timing was ideal. After reunification of the two Germanys in 1990, the new home of the federal parliament would be Berlin’s Reichstag. Renovations to the building began in the autumn of 1995 with the federal parliament opening in the spring of 1999.

From 9 to 22 June 2025, the Reichstag building was illuminated nightly with a light show in a 30-year anniversary tribute to the famous 1995 artwork. In a 20- to 30-minute cycle, the light-show appeared to first envelop the building in silver fabric. The fabric cover flapped in artificial breeze, before the cover lost its shape and fell onto the ground at the base of the building. The free-of-charge light show began shortly after sunset at about 930pm and continued until 1am. Whatever Christo and Jeanne-Claude chose to cover and transform, their art works posed questions of perception, origins, shape, functionality, and permanence.

•   DW: Germany Arts
•   Visit Berlin


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Mittlere Brücke, Rhein, Rhine, Basel, Switzerland, Schweiz, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday, Basel: Middle Bridge, Upper Rhine

In this south-facing view from Basel’s Mittlere Brücke (Middle Bridge) over the Rhine river, morning light illuminates the oldest part of the city with the two-tower Münster (cathedral) at the left and Martinskirche (St. Martin’s Church) at right.

I made the image above on 27 Jul 2024 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and the following settings: 1/1000-sec, f/10, ISO1000, and 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-wyB.

Regierungsviertel, Marschallbrücke, Spree, Berlin, Germany, Deutschland, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday, Berlin 2025 (9): Government District

Facing west to the Regierungsviertel (Government district) over the Spree river from the bridge Marschallbrücke, the Reichstag is a symbol of the turbulent and tragic past, and the post-reunification buildings that are the Paul-Löbe-Haus and the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders Haus are representative of the present and hope for the future.

I made the image above on 27 May 2025 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and these settings: 1/1000-sec, f/13, ISO1000, and 18.5/28mm focal length. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-vHD.

Putlitzbruecke, Berlin Deutschland, Germany, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday, Berlin 2025 (7): “Asian Food”

Why is an Asian food (“Asiatisches Lebensmittel”) warehouse outlet situated next to a waste- and recycling-facility? Circumstances couldn’t be helped? Microaggressions manifested as a passive-aggressive real-estate interaction?

Am I also complicit in white privilege?

I made the image above on 24 May 2025 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and these settings: 1/1000-sec, f/10, ISO1000, and 18.5/28mm focal length. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-vGg.