Roemerberg | Fotoeins Fotografie

An afternoon at Roemerberg, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: animal kingdom (Frankfurt am Main)

I’ve been reading about photographer Joel Meyerowitz and studying his pictures. Meyerowitz said:

You look at it [a photograph] and all around the real world is humming, buzzing and moving, and yet in this little frame there is stillness that looks like the world. That connection, that collision, that interfacing, is one of the most astonishing things we can experience.

Photography is a response that has to do with the momentary recognition of things. Suddenly you’re alive. A minute later there was nothing there. I just watched it evaporate. You look one moment and there’s everything, next moment it’s gone.

At the Römerberg square in the German city of Frankfurt am Main, I stand apart from the crowds pointing their cameras at the fountain or at the reconstructed famous buildings to the side. I slow down, stop, and take a breath. I happen to look down at the small dog in the bag, attached by a ribbon to the gentleman holding a purse in his other hand. He’s adjusting his pants in a semi-reluctant pose and although he’s facing away from me, the pose is almost as if he’s been “caught holding the bag.” The purse’s owner has gone out of the scene, looking at something else that’s caught their eye or perhaps they’re looking for souvenirs.

Are they visitors or residents? Does it even matter? The tiny pocket-sized canine is the key.

The dog looks at me distinctly unamused, whereas the pigeon “inside” the cord sits calmly on the cobblestone, seemingly unconcerned by the surrounding bipedal hustle and bustle. Once I’ve taken the frame, I’ve witnessed the rhythm of legs, corners, and triangles; sometimes amusement strikes without warning. Does the dog somehow sense it’s at the bottom of the hierarchy? Is the dog’s pleading look a request for escape? Of course, I’m also thinking about Elliott Erwitt’s “Snaps“.

I made the above photograph on 9 May 2015 with the Canon EOS6D, 24-105 L-zoom, and the following settings: 1/200-sec, f/16, ISO1000, and 105mm focal length. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-9Fo.

Römerberg, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: Heine’s warning about book burning (Frankfurt)

Most visitors to Frankfurt am Main will stop at the historic Römerberg square for pictures of the surrounding buildings with bank towers in the background. But a glance down onto the cobblestones near the Gerechtigkeitsbrunnen (Fountain of Justice) reveals a writer’s stern warning. In the tragedy “Almansor“, the German-Jewish writer Heinrich Heine warned readers about the dangers of burning books:

Das war ein Vorspiel nur. Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.
– Heinrich Heine, “Almansor” (1820-1821)

Heine wrote how burning books is a dangerous omen: “where books are burned, people aren’t far behind.” A little over 100 years later, this prescient line played out as the Nazis took over and targeted in particular Jews. On 10 May 1933 in Frankfurt and in other cities across the country in plans orchestrated by the Propaganda Ministry, tens of thousands including university students loyal to the Nazis gathered to burn books by writers who were Jewish or who were deemed ‘unpatriotic’ or ‘un-German’ to the Nazi ideal. Books by Bertolt Brecht, Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, Erich Kästner, and Heinrich Mann among others were thrown into the fire. The Gedenkplatte (or Gedenktafel) Bücherverbrennung is a memorial and modern reminder for constant vigilance against the dangerous reasons for book burning and the consequences beyond.