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Posts tagged ‘Deutschland’

Stuttgart’s Gerda Taro

Travel day 76, Euro day 75.

I’m in Stuttgart for a few days, and I rediscover photographer Gerda Taro was born in the city. I’d already read some history of photography, including the Spanish Civil War and Gerda Taro as the first woman to photograph and publish images about open conflict. I’ve gone looking for some traces in the city of her birth, as a quick and spontaneous mini-project in the midst of 90 consecutive days in Europe.

Memorial, near Olgaeck

Near the bus and tram stop Olgaeck is Gerda Taro Plaza, in memory of the young woman photographer who was born “Gerta Pohorylle” in Stuttgart and who once lived with her family in the area. At the plaza is a 2014 memorial dedicated to Taro; the text on all nine panels is entirely in German.

*Named for photographer Gerda Taro (1910-1937), the plaza was unveiled by the city in 2008, and redesigned in 2014 with the installation of the memorial.*

*“O”. Gerda Taro, a pioneer in war photography.*

*“R”*. *The 1920s: Jazz, Theater, and the Stuttgart Kickers.*

*“A”*. *Leipzig: distributing leaflets against Hitler.*

*“T”. Exile in Paris: meeting André Friedmann, and the creation of Gerda Taro and Robert Capa. There is no Capa without Taro.*

*“A”. The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.*

*“D”. Barricades, armed women, equitable distribution of land.*

*“R”. The camera as witness: misery and terror from bombs.*

*“E”. Getting up close, for the world at large.*

“G”. The first woman war-photographer killed on location. Documenting Spain’s civil war with her camera, Gerda Taro was accidentally run over by a tank and died from her injuries in a hospital near Madrid on 26 July 1937. She was buried in a marked grave in Paris’ Cimetière du Père-Lachaise.

*Republican militia women training on the beach outside Barcelona, Spain: photo by Gerda Taro, August 1936. Provided by Ur Cameras on Flickr via Creative Commons.*

Family home

Not far from Gerda-Taro-Plaza, I found the Pohorylle family’s former home, based on this poignant essay. I didn’t see any Gedenktafel (memorial plaque) or any Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) in the pavement, at or in front of either building 170 or 170A. In 1929, when Gerta was 19 years old, the Pohorylle family moved from Stuttgart to Leipzig.

*Obstructed view of the former Pohorylle family house (in light orange), as seen from passage off Cottastrasse.*

*Gate to path access for building address Alexanderstrasse 170A.*

*Former Pohorylle family house, at Alexanderstrasse 170A.*

Taro, short bio

Born Gerta Pohorylle, 1910 in Stuttgart, Germany; died 1937 in El Escorial, Spain.

“… Studied in Leipzig starting in 1929. Emigrated to Paris in 1933. In 1935 began working with the photographer André Friedmann, later known as Robert Capa. In 1935-1936 worked for the Alliance Photo Agency. Shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in the summer of 1936, she and Capa went to Spain; other photography assignments in Spain followed in early 1937. She was fatally wounded at the Brunete front in July 1937 and was the first female war correspondent killed in action.”

Source: “Women War Photographers: from Lee Miller to Anja Niedringhaus” (Munich: Prestel, 2019), p. 218.

I made all photos above with an iPhone15 on 22 Jul 2024. I received no support from an external organization. This post composed with Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

Deutschland Ticket, for Canadian visitors (2024)

How-to buy guide, effective May to August 2024.

( 2025 note: On 18 September 2025, Bavarian state broadcaster BR24 reported the monthly price for the Deutschland-Ticket will go up by 5€ to 63€ , starting 1 January 2026. The price had already gone from 49€ to 58€ for the 2025 calendar year. My summer 2025 purchase went the same way as in 2024, whose details are described below. )

89 days within Europe includes by necessity substantial travel by train within Germany. I’ve already booked in advance a number of intercity express segments, but what about local transport and regional trains?

The “Deutschland Ticket” (D-Ticket) is a rail ticket for one person and costs 49€ per month on a rolling subscription. The ticket is generally valid for local transport (bus, tram, U-Bahn, S-Bahn, intracity ferry) and regional rail (RB, most RE, IRE), but not for long-distance IC and ICE routes. Intended primarily for commuters, visitors to Germany can also purchase these tickets.

It’s early-April 2024, and I’m about to buy the D-Ticket for 49€ for the entire month of May. The ticket’s “rolling subscription” means if I do nothing else before 10 May, I’ll also automatically purchase a D-Ticket for the month of June for 49€. I’ll need the D-Ticket for May, June, July, and August; but I can only buy one month at a time.

I choose Munich’s MVV-App, based on successes reported by other travellers. I’m only using the Munich app for ticket purchase, and I’m not planning to use public transport within Munich. To buy a D-Ticket, customers are neither limited by their choice of app/method, nor by the base/location where the app is based. My question is whether a Canadian-based credit card is an acceptable form of payment by the processing company in Germany for a German-based app.

Nussberg, 19. Bezirk, Döbling, Wien, Vienna, Austria, Österreich, fotoeins.com

23 for 23: Foto(ein)s in 2023

Above/featured: Vienna’s green vineyards on Nussberg, with Kahlenberg at centre in the background. Photo, 14 Jun 2023.

A year in review typically provides coverage spanning a period of six months or more; the period doesn’t even have to be a continuous stretch. But in this case, my highlights come solely from a period of six weeks in May and June. All else pales by comparison.

All of the images presented below have been corrected for geometric distortion and rotation, with further adjustments to image-crop, brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, clarity, sharpness, vibrance, saturation, and colour levels. These images are as always best viewed on screens larger than a miniscule mobile.

( Click here for images and more )

My Fuji X70: Kodak Color Negative (XTrans2 recipe)

Above/featured: Taunusanlage train station, Frankfurt am Main – 18 Jun 2023.

The Fujifilm X70 mirrorless fixed-lens prime camera has added a lot to my approach to photography for projects in domestic and international scope. To satisfy my curiosity about Fujifilm’s analog-film simulation (film-sim) recipes, I’ve provided examples of X70 images with the following recipes:

• CineStill 800T
• Ektachrome 100SW (saturated warm)
• Fujichrome Slide
• Kodachrome 64
• Kodacolor
• Kodak Platinum 200
• Monochrome Red

Here I show images made with the “Kodak Color Negative” recipe, which Ritchie Roesch describes in Fuji X Weekly:

… The aesthetic that I was hoping to achieve with this recipe was Kodak Portra 400. I don’t believe that I succeeded in faithfully mimicking that (sometimes there’s a similarity); however, it does seem to produce a Kodak-like color negative film look, perhaps more like Ultramax, but not exactly that, either. Whatever it does or doesn’t resemble, I personally really like the aesthetic produced by this recipe …

The recipe is for X-Trans II sensors and the built-in availability of “Classic Chrome”. The settings on my X70 are:

“Classic Chrome” built-in film-sim
Dynamic Range: DR200
Color: +2 (High)
Sharpness: -1 (Medium-Soft)
Highlight: -2 (Soft)
Shadow: -1 (Medium-Soft)
Noise Reduction: -2 (Low)
White Balance: Incandescent; +6 Red, -7 Blue
ISO: Auto, up to 3200

I assigned this recipe for my “indoor” setting as 1 of the 7 camera’s custom presets, but the recipe’s versatility allowed for additional tests at outside locations. The following JPG images are “almost” straight-out-of-the-camera: only minor adjustments to brightness level and a crop to a predefined image size have been applied, with no corrections to colour, contrast, geometric distortion, or rotation. The blue (“cool”) colour-cast is very real, which is especially evident on images made outdoors under sunny conditions.

( Click here for images )

My Fuji X70: Monochrome Red (XTrans2 recipe)

Above/featured: Gateway Gardens station, Frankfurt am Main – 11 May 2023.

The Fujifilm X70 mirrorless fixed-lens prime camera has added a lot to my approach to photography for projects in both domestic and international scope. To satisfy my curiosity about Fujifilm’s analog-film simulation (film-sim) recipes for varying “looks” and “palettes” applied to images, I’ve provided examples of X70 images with these recipes:

• CineStill 800T
• Ektachrome 100SW (saturated warm)
• Fujichrome Slide
• Kodachrome 64
• Kodacolor
• Kodak Platinum 200

I examine the Monochrome+R film-simulation recipe, which Ritchie Roesch describes in Fuji X Weekly:

… Back when I shot black-and-white film, I usually used a color filter to manipulate the shades of grey, and for landscape photography the Red filter was my most-used option. You cannot use these filters on your Fujifilm camera, but Fujifilm does provide you with three faux filters: +Y, +R, and +G. These mimic the aesthetic of using a Yellow, Red, or Green filter (sort of). In my opinion, +R doesn’t actually replicate the use of a Red filter very well; it’s more like an Orange filter. This recipe is intended to produce a look more similar to a Red filter on black-and-white film, which means that it will darken blues and lighten reds.

This recipe is for the X-Trans II sensor. My X70 settings are:

“Monochrome+R” built-in film-sim
Dynamic Range: DR400
Color: —
Sharpness: +1 (Medium-Hard)
Highlight: -1 (Medium-Soft)
Shadow: +2 (Hard)
Noise Reduction: -2 (Low)
White Balance: Fluorescent1 (day); -4 Red, +7 Blue
ISO: Auto, up to 6400

I had assigned this recipe as “general black and white”, with which I experimented in a variety of locations and settings. The following images are almost straight-out-of-the-camera; only adjustments to brightness level and size (2048 by 1365 pix) have been applied, with no corrections to colour, contrast, geometric distortion, or rotation.

( Click here for images )