Urban Photography | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘Urban Photography’ category

Seattle Ballard: Sunday Farmers Market

In Seattle, a friend in Ballard recommends a visit to their neighbourhood’s weekly farmers’ market. Despite the forecast for intermittent morning showers, I’m lured by any stroll through a market for bright harvest colours and freshly prepared food.

A slow meander through the stalls, letting curiosity be the guide. Fresh apples and pears here; ripe plump tomatoes there. From an assortment of red and yellow peppers; to an array of yellow and green gourds. Quickly, the appetite is on high alert. Quesadillas prepared fresh from the grill. Hot from the fryer, little donuts sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Happy dogs walking their humans; couples strolling with children; others sitting on the curb for a chat, nosh, and sip.

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Vienna: Otto Wagner’s architectural legacy

Above/featured: On the Linke Wienzeile, opposite the Naschmarkt at right. Photo, 18 May 2018 (6D1).

What: Among many are 2 key structures: Post Savings Bank, Steinhof church.
Why: Some of the most important architectural examples of 20th-century modernism.
Where: Many examples found throughout the city of Vienna.
“Wagner School” included Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Jože Plečnik.

To visit Vienna is to know Otto Wagner. A first-time visitor to the city will be forgiven for not knowing about Wagner or his creations, but throughout their time spent in the Austrian capital, they’ll encounter Wagner’s early 20th-century “Modern Architecture”.

Vienna is for many the city of Beethoven, Mozart, and Strauss; the city of historic and stylish cafés with coffee and Sacher Torte; the city whose pride is revealed in the combined World Heritage Site that are the classic period architecture within the Old Town and the beautiful palace and gardens at Schönbrunn. Flowing through the city is the Danube river, memorialized in Johann Strauss II’s “An der schönen blauen Donau” (The Blue Danube).

The evolution of architectural style is plainly evident throughout the city. Around the Ringstrasse (inner ring road) is architecture in the Historicism style, with big nods to Neoclassicism in the Parliament, Neo-Gothic in City Hall and the Votivkirche, and a lot of Neo-Renaissance represented by the City Theatre, Art History Museum, Natural History Museum, Opera House, and the University.

But as calendars flipped from 1899 to 1900, the fin-du-siècle heralded a move to bold thinking, different style, and a change in the way and reasons why buildings were put together. Consequently, Vienna is a city of 20th-century modernism whose traces are found in art, architecture, and urban planning. Even with post-war reconstruction in the mid-20th century and a mindful push for environmental rigour in the 21st-century, Vienna still remains in many ways Otto Wagner’s city.

Modern Architecture began with (Charles Rennie) Mackintosh in Scotland, Otto Wagner in Vienna, and Louis Sullivan in Chicago.

– Rudolph Schindler, who studied architecture under Otto Wagner (Sarnitz 2005).

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My Cologne: wandering the streets in Ehrenfeld

For many, the German city of Cologne brings to mind the Cathedral, Karneval, and perfumed water.

For me, Cologne brings to mind great friends, tasty Turkish nibbles, football side 1. FC Köln, and Ehrenfeld.

My friend Y wanted to test her new camera on the streets, and when she suggested the Ehrenfeld neighbourhood, I readily agreed. My many visits to this city on the Rhine have frequently ended up in Ehrenfeld that’s largely Turkish and working class, an immigrant blue-collar area with which I readily identify and it’s why Ehrenfeld is my K-‘hood.

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Seattle: murals in West Seattle

Above/featured: Facing east at The Junction: SW Alaska Street at California Avenue SW. At left (northeast corner) is the red-brick Campbell Building from 1911, oldest in the neighbourhood and a designated City of Seattle historic landmark since 2017.

What: Paintings depicting the history of West Seattle.
Where: In and around West Seattle’s The Junction.
Why: Arts project with community and pride.

Technically, West Seattle is an area consisting of several neighbourhoods within the city of Seattle. Historically, West Seattle feels separate, a peninsula separated from the centre by the flow of water and peoples along the Duwamish river valley. West Seattle had incorporated as its own city in 1902, before agreeing to annexation by Seattle in 1907.

One key to West Seattle is “The Junction”: an intersection of 2 former streetcar lines “West Seattle” and “Fauntleroy”. As expected, commercial activity took root at the intersection and although streetcars have vanished, the nickname has remained as a simple useful designation.

A product of West Seattle, retired businessman Earl Cruzen (1920-2017) launched a local arts and community project in the late-1980s, inspired after visiting other towns in Washington as well as Chemainus on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island. Cruzen promoted the project with support among residents and business owners, generated fundraising efforts, and brought American and Canadian artists into the city to paint wall murals to highlight the history of people along the Duwamish river and the history of West Seattle. A total of 11 murals were painted, dedicated, and unveiled between 1989 and 1993.

Over time, the murals deteriorated and faded without touchup or maintenance. Members of the Southwest Seattle Historical Society engaged the community in 2018 with questions about the murals, and about raising money to support revitalizing the murals. In May 2018, Adah Cruzen honoured her late-husband with a gift of 100-thousand dollars to the West Seattle Junction Association to boost the restoration process.

So, what do the murals mean to the people of West Seattle?

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Munich: Ghost station “Olympic Stadium”

In the vicinity of Munich’s Olympic Stadium is a train station overgrown with brush and weeds. The tracks stretch north and south, but go nowhere.

Munich played host to the Summer Olympics in 1972; physical reminders include the Olympiadorf (Olympic Village), Olympiapark, and the Olympiastadion (Olympic Stadium). In 1988, the train station “München Olympiastadion” closed to train service for the final time. Rail tracks which connected the station with the North Ring freight tracks were cut, isolating the station and leaving it to decay.

Since 2001, the Olympic Village has been listed as part of the heritage Olympiapark ensemble which includes the abandoned station. But will the station be left to decay? Or will the station be refurbished in some way to become a living memorial?

Historical maps of the MVV U- and S-Bahn system show how train service from central Munich to Olympic Stadium was utilized. S-Bahn train service carried passengers along the central trunk to Olympic Stadium via Hauptbahnhof, Laim, and Moosach; check out the system maps for June 1972 and June 1988.

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