The Wastelands of Berlin
For The Illuminator
At the moment Berlin is cultivating a distinct international presence. It has managed to establish itself as a new mecca for young people who are searching for a different kind of air to breathe. It is a city drenched in freedom and creativity hangs thick in the air; dripping down the buildings and manifesting itself in huge works of street art found on every corner.
There is however a much darker side to the city. Here, poverty is rife.
Between Alexanderplatz and Rosenthaler Platz a man with few fingers and even fewer toes begs up and down the rows of cars that stop at the lights. His skin stretches over the lumps of bone, unsettlingly bare without the usual protrusions. His two toes, curl upwards, balancing his tiny frame. He holds his empty paper coffee cup in the crook of his wrist and when the lights turn green he delicately hops, as if he were walking on gravel, until he reaches the safety of the pavement.
On the platform of one of those stations on the way to Warschauser Strasse sat a boy unconscious, not quite a man, slumped against the wall. Like a Philip Pullman creation without its demon; his body present but his soul lost long ago. A dog or what is left of it, sits by his side. Its body forms an uncomfortable shape, bones protruding and skin strained.
These kinds of scenes can be witnessed on a daily basis. It is however not only the people sleeping on the floor and begging in the streets who suffer as bankruptcy flows through the veins of the city, but the city itself. The city’s aesthetic reflects its state: struggling, reliant on tourism and yet to rebuild itself to a state of completion.
When seen from an aerial perspective, Berlin appears as if still ridden with the bullet holes from the war. Like wounds that never healed, vast and empty expanses of space stretch; sporadically scattered as the body of the city finds itself deprived of the architectural nourishment it craves.
Sparse and barren, miniature wastelands rest abandoned, nestled in the shadows of protective fences, shielding them from the intrusive eyes of the tourist. Behind the criss-cross metal grid, mounds of rubble sit in the dust and the dirt as the cracked and broken windows look down on the graffiti artists who violate their vulnerability. The grass, not green and fertile but dry and drained of colour juts from the earth, overgrown and liberated by solitude.
The Illuminator’s photographer, Graeme Vaughan, asks through his photographs whether the presence of these voids are a signal of great potential and achievement yet to come or a mark of a struggling city hopeless and broke.
At the moment Berlin is cultivating a distinct international presence. It has managed to establish itself as a new mecca for young people who are searching for a different kind of air to breathe. It is a city drenched in freedom and creativity hangs thick in the air; dripping down the buildings and manifesting itself in huge works of street art found on every corner.
There is however a much darker side to the city. Here, poverty is rife.
Between Alexanderplatz and Rosenthaler Platz a man with few fingers and even fewer toes begs up and down the rows of cars that stop at the lights. His skin stretches over the lumps of bone, unsettlingly bare without the usual protrusions. His two toes, curl upwards, balancing his tiny frame. He holds his empty paper coffee cup in the crook of his wrist and when the lights turn green he delicately hops, as if he were walking on gravel, until he reaches the safety of the pavement.
On the platform of one of those stations on the way to Warschauser Strasse sat a boy unconscious, not quite a man, slumped against the wall. Like a Philip Pullman creation without its demon; his body present but his soul lost long ago. A dog or what is left of it, sits by his side. Its body forms an uncomfortable shape, bones protruding and skin strained.
These kinds of scenes can be witnessed on a daily basis. It is however not only the people sleeping on the floor and begging in the streets who suffer as bankruptcy flows through the veins of the city, but the city itself. The city’s aesthetic reflects its state: struggling, reliant on tourism and yet to rebuild itself to a state of completion.
When seen from an aerial perspective, Berlin appears as if still ridden with the bullet holes from the war. Like wounds that never healed, vast and empty expanses of space stretch; sporadically scattered as the body of the city finds itself deprived of the architectural nourishment it craves.
Sparse and barren, miniature wastelands rest abandoned, nestled in the shadows of protective fences, shielding them from the intrusive eyes of the tourist. Behind the criss-cross metal grid, mounds of rubble sit in the dust and the dirt as the cracked and broken windows look down on the graffiti artists who violate their vulnerability. The grass, not green and fertile but dry and drained of colour juts from the earth, overgrown and liberated by solitude.
The Illuminator’s photographer, Graeme Vaughan, asks through his photographs whether the presence of these voids are a signal of great potential and achievement yet to come or a mark of a struggling city hopeless and broke.
There is however a much darker side to the city. Here, poverty is rife.
Between Alexanderplatz and Rosenthaler Platz a man with few fingers and even fewer toes begs up and down the rows of cars that stop at the lights. His skin stretches over the lumps of bone, unsettlingly bare without the usual protrusions. His two toes, curl upwards, balancing his tiny frame. He holds his empty paper coffee cup in the crook of his wrist and when the lights turn green he delicately hops, as if he were walking on gravel, until he reaches the safety of the pavement.
On the platform of one of those stations on the way to Warschauser Strasse sat a boy unconscious, not quite a man, slumped against the wall. Like a Philip Pullman creation without its demon; his body present but his soul lost long ago. A dog or what is left of it, sits by his side. Its body forms an uncomfortable shape, bones protruding and skin strained.
These kinds of scenes can be witnessed on a daily basis. It is however not only the people sleeping on the floor and begging in the streets who suffer as bankruptcy flows through the veins of the city, but the city itself. The city’s aesthetic reflects its state: struggling, reliant on tourism and yet to rebuild itself to a state of completion.
When seen from an aerial perspective, Berlin appears as if still ridden with the bullet holes from the war. Like wounds that never healed, vast and empty expanses of space stretch; sporadically scattered as the body of the city finds itself deprived of the architectural nourishment it craves.
Sparse and barren, miniature wastelands rest abandoned, nestled in the shadows of protective fences, shielding them from the intrusive eyes of the tourist. Behind the criss-cross metal grid, mounds of rubble sit in the dust and the dirt as the cracked and broken windows look down on the graffiti artists who violate their vulnerability. The grass, not green and fertile but dry and drained of colour juts from the earth, overgrown and liberated by solitude.
The Illuminator’s photographer, Graeme Vaughan, asks through his photographs whether the presence of these voids are a signal of great potential and achievement yet to come or a mark of a struggling city hopeless and broke.
As an Berlin boy, this article is both thought provoking and scarily true. Excellent piece of writing!!
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