Architecture – Page 6 – The Inner Frame

Wesseling at Night

Wesseling is a scenic industrial area about half way between Bonn and Cologne.

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The mostly functional architecture and perpetual construction is rarely as amusing as in the picture above. The time to be there is at night, when the architecture of metal and concrete is replaced by a much more fundamental architecture of light and shadow.

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In the nearby harbor, large cranes appear to be asleep. Are they dreaming of electric sheep, too?

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And then there are the relics from the past, like this barely recognizable wind mill.

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With increasing darkness, the film grain takes over. Is this how Georges Seurat would have painted this? I wish.

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Maya Ruins (Yucatan II)

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After a few days in Yucatan, I left most of my luggage in the hotel, and went on a three day road trip through Yucatan. The first stop was Chichenitza. If you ever travel there, arrive early.

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New Year’s day I spent a night in a hammock in Playa del Carmen, had an easy morning swim in the Caribbean, and a fantastic breakfast. The nearby ruins of Tulum show that the Mayas knew to live.

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Then I hitchhiked to Coba to get an idea what the less visited Maya places look like: More jungle, fewer tourists, interesting animal noises, large spiders. Here at last I had the feeling that around the corner there could be some left over piece of the real Maya civilization.

Nohoch Mul Pyramid

The next morning I took the bus back to Merida, for recovery and more sightseeing.

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Near Merida (Yucatan I)

When I told one of my Gringo friends that I would spend the two weeks of winter break 1993 in Mexico, traveling through Yucatan by myself and using public transport, he had only one word: Nuts. So I took precautions by learning a little Spanish, which made me much easier to identify as de Alemannia than when I had spoken inglés.

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In any case, I never felt threatened. I flew into Mexico City and continued on to Merida, the capital of Yucatan, where I spent a few days exploring the city and its surroundings. The landscape is flat and wooded, the geology lime stone, the climate warm and humid. People clearly live from tourism and agriculture, and are friendly but shy.

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Main attraction for the generic tourist are the Maya ruins.

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While it is true that the Maya civilization was already past its peak when the first European arrived, the almost complete eradication of the still extant culture makes the presence of what is left haunting. The alien looking artwork just tells us that the aliens, that’s us.

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The near Caribbean coast invites to watch storms and muse over past and present destruction.

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Le Ventre de Paris

The Belly of Paris must always have been a place worth visiting. After the food market was dismantled, Les Halles became a gigantic shopping center. I have not seen it since the new construction began a few years ago.

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In any case, the area is a place worth visiting without wallet. At some places, we cannot tell anymore whether we are inside or outside.

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Architecture permeates everything, even the layout of the boutiques. The lady was not pleased with me taking the picture and called security. And this was in 1991.

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Long passageways in almost black and white made me think of Alain Resnais.

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Escaped, one wonders if Henri de Miller’s sculpture L’Écoute in front of the nearby church of St Eustace ever gets a quiet moment.

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In Memoriam

There is nothing like Paris. Before and after a backpacking vacation in the French Alps in 1991, I spent a few days just walking around in the city.

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To honor the city and its people, I have scanned and edited the negatives from these walks, as a personal work of memory.
The view above is from the Centre Georges Pompidou. The spooky sky is caused by shooting through the plexiglass windows surrounding the outside escalators of the building.

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The French have a wonderful tradition how their presidents invest enormous sums in art and culture.

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Right outside, the Stravinsky Fountain, with sculptures by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle, vibrant with colors and life.

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Then there is the Arab World Institute, one of the Grands Projets of François Mitterrand.

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Another project Mitterrand completed: The conversion of a railway station into a museum, the Musée d’Orsay.

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This walk will continue.

Decay (Museum Hombroich II)

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There are more things to see and do at the Museum Island Hombroich than to visit the pavilions. Artists in residence produce landscape art, and concerts are given.

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I wonder how this sculpture has withered since I took these pictures in 1992. This one is part of a full circle of such outcroppings.

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Mechanical structures clearly without purpose alternate with objects that are equally clearly of daily importance but could as well be just pieces of art.

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An outdoor museum where the objects are exposed to the elements defies the usual purpose of a museum: the preservation of its artifacts.
Here at Hombroich the time has just been slowed down a bit, making it the main object to contemplate.

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Karana Mudra (Museum Hombroich I)

When the Cold War ended, a missile base near Neuss, Germany, became obsolete. The area was bought by the industrial real estate agent Karl Heinrich Müller, and turned into the Museum Island Hombroich.

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Visitors are greeted appropriately by an Asian statue, holding his hand in the Karana Mudra gesture to ban evil spirits.

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Meticulously landscaped by Bernhard Korte, the area is populated with small buildings (landscape chapels),
by Erwin Heerich that contain Asian or contemporary art, or just empty space.

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Soft glass roofs and narrow doors create a balance between diffuse and directed light.

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The geometric harshness of the buildings disappears in the fading light.

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1492

After the invasion of Granada in 1492 by King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I, things changed in Granada.

One can debate how liberal the emirate had been, but it certainly didn’t get better. Whenever choices become limited,life does not necessarily become easier.

Today, we have a choice. We can face reality with clarity, like the cathedral of Granada, built over the ruins of its former mosque.

Or we can prefer the blurred view over the remaining walls of the Alhambra.

For the moment, it’s maybe best to keep gardening.

Time Itself

During the Nasrid Dynasty, the emirs of Granada had the material and intellectual resources to turn the castle of the Alhambra into a palace without equal.

Subsequent vandalism, ignorance, and neglect have destroyed much of it, but what remains makes me wonder about what kind of people lived there.

The wall decorations do not tell stories of battles and victories. The lines of the abstract designs appear to repeat themselves forever in infinite variations.

This makes me wonder whether the artists had the flow of time itself in mind rather than particular events.

They must have likened their buildings to the plants in the gardens of the Generalife, organically growing and transforming.

Postscriptum

I need to apologize. The blog post from this morning was not meant as a commentary on the church shooting in Charleston. Nothing in this blog is intended as a commentary on daily events. In fact, most posts, including today’s, were written weeks or months ago.

I still should have reviewed what was scheduled for today. It is inappropriate because the title and some of its content suggest intended connections. Connections there are, but they were not intended.

This being said, the recent violent tensions between Black and White have been on my mind quite a bit for the past months, and I do not want to deny that I meant to say more than make a general statement about black and white photography.

However, I am not going to rephrase my words, or add to them. The main purpose of this blog is the construction of time, both past and future, and I will not alter the past deliberately. Interpret as you like, but please take connections between blog time and real time as what they are: random incidents.

Peace.