Ajar door, double leaf door, unhinged door, wide door, single door, hinged door, grating door, banging door, dead door, hidden door, armored door, toilet door, slamming door, double door, adorned door, closed door, colorful door, wooden door ……old doors Kefalonia….
Around Easter I made an excursion to the place where I have been born. It’s one of the nicest places in Hamburg with lots of old and beautiful houses which fortunately haven’t been destroyed in WWII.
My Greek father worked in the embassy to deal with the reparation payments from Germany and he got a huge flat in an old house close to the embassy from the British occupation forces. I still have a very nice photo of him standing in front of a wonderful old car with the plate saying “Greek Military Mission”. He even had a driver.
I lived in this flat for 20 years and then moved to a smaller flat in a more rural area at the North-Eastern boundaries of Hamburg. We are surrounded by forests here, it is very green, but Hamburg is in general very, very green. We have a lot of parks and 2 huge lakes in the center which you can travel with old steamboats. Hamburg is amongst the 10 most beautiful towns in the world next to Vancouver etc. We have a lot of dikes and bridges here, more than Amsterdam and Venice altogether. Our harbor is huge and very interesting but this will be a story for another post.
Sometimes I love to return to the place where I stayed during my first years, even though there are some sad memories related to it. Let’s take a stroll together.
When the last roses are blooming in withering colors and their buds don’t dare to unfurl anymore, the world is slowly getting sad and grey, and my heart is filled with wistfulness as if a witch had pulled a night blue veil over my head. Summer gives a feeling of eternity, but autumn and winter a feeling of decay and death which weighs heavily on my heart.
Bright colors are leaving the earth like the God of the sun is drifting away in his carriage to give place to the moon and the darkness.
The sun loses its brightness and lightness and gives a melancholic touch to the earth. Dew drops are clinging at rose petals like my tears for the gone summer. The colors of decay adorn nature with resentment and opaqueness – a beauty in decay.
I photographed these last roses in Kefalonia in our landlord’s garden.
I don’t know why I’m so attracted by decay but for me it has even more beautiful colors and transfers more feelings than new and modern things. All these old things have some kind of a soul, a story to tell, a history; they have been used in good and in bad times and that’s noticeable. People have vanished without a trace but some old things are still there to tell their stories. The music that would fit these photos would be the blues because some of these photos are very blue, but still very honest. These old things don’t pretend to be new or young like some people, they just show their “wrinkles”, having gone through sun and rain, storm or even earthquakes, and I feel respect for every year they have lived, endured and enjoyed their lifetime – if one can say so about objects.
This time I take you for a walk in my beautiful home-town Hamburg. We have so many old buildings here and some of them have very nice details which I photographed for you during several months. Most of the details are from the time of art nouveau (1890 – 1910), which is my favorite style. Art nouveau originates from the English Arts and Crafts movement which wanted to put an antipole against the progressive industrialisation. The Arts and Crafts movement wanted to maintain the artisanal traditions.
Most of the details are from normal dwelling houses but three details (the woman, the man and the putto – all in grey) are at the entrance of our academy for fine arts. I visited the cantine quite often when I studied arts at another academy not far away. It’s a very beautiful building close to a pond with swans, ducks and geese.
I don’t know where summer is? At least not in Hamburg. It’s cold and rains a lot. That’s the moment when I start to think about Kefalonia – Greece. Summer is really summer there. It’s hot, sometimes maybe too hot even. I live between these two extremes, either too hot or too cold and rainy. But still I miss my island in the sun, look at my photos and refeel all the emotions I had when I was there. I love this endless blue sky. How often have I looked into the sky there and thought: where does this blue end? There must be an end somewhere, but there wasn’t. Sometimes we had heavy tempests, so much that I thought the world would go down. And the next day: the sky was blue, endlessly blue, the sun was shining, it was warm and very agreeable. Especially in the late afternoons the island is turned into fluid gold, the air is like a velvety cape that somebody who loves you puts carefully around your shoulders. I still feel it and the memory feels so good. Wish I was there….
paralyzed
I refuse to choose and
so the doors that lie before me
remain forever unopened
some sit ajar…just a bit
a crack to let light in
brightening the shadows of “what if”…just a bit
immobile, however,
the hinges grow stiff in their waiting
possibility remains trapped,
paralyzed behind the door
I refuse to let swing wide
saying to myself,
“what if it’s the wrong door?”
-Kayce Hughlett at Lucy Creates
In the last months we made several trips to the Eastern part of Germany, down at the Elbe River, because we want to buy a house there. Some parts of this area have been the GDR for many years and it seems that they fell into oblivion. There are nearly no people on the streets, only a few shops, no life, nearly deserted and slowly decaying. You could get the impression that they tip up the footpath at 20.00h – as we say here.
On the other hand, due to the fact, that they didn’t renovate the old houses – partly even with timber framework, you can still find a lot of wonderful very old doors, even from the time 1815 – 1850. Unfortunately many of them were half-rotten, which is a real pity. But some had been fixed and painted and were beautiful again. Hope you enjoy my photos.
It’s a long time ago that I posted something from Kefalonia, Greece. That’s why I looked-up all my photos today. I still got so many old doors but today you will see some old windows. Windows are like the eyes of a house. They tell stories, too.
I love these pastel colors of decay, the little melancholic mood they transfer. I still remember these wonderful and calm golden hours when I went for walks in the evening. The sun was still shining, but was on its way to say goodbye to this side of the world. The golden sunrays were covering the whole island with a soft cape of farewell, still so mellow and warm like the Mediterranean sun is. All colors are changing, looking more blurred and there is tranquility all over as if the day is tired. This special spirit is so overwhelming for me that I nearly feel like crying. I want to stop the sun from disappearing behind the mountains; I want it to stay forever and ever and not to leave me there in darkness. It’s the death of a day.
About a month ago we went from Hamburg to Berlin by car. It’s about 300 km, and so we decided to make a break in a little town called Wittstock which was GDR before 1989.
I actually haven’t been much around in Eastern Germany and so this was quite exciting to see. Wittstock is a small town with about 15.000 inhabitants. It is one of the eldest towns in Brandenburg and was mentioned first in 946. The town was called Wittstock after a castle that doesn’t exist anymore.
The architecture of the old buildings was very interesting and reminded me of Lueneburg. The houses and churches were mostly made out of red bricks or had timber frameworks. You can still see the old city wall with towers for entry, the townhall, the water tower for steam engines, old houses which are decaying and rather desolate with nice old doors. Hope you enjoy a little visit in another part of Germany as I show usually.
made by mitza 