Get up at dawn with your camera and take a walk through your neighborhood, tour your city, your town, your countryside. What do you see? How does place change for you in those early morning hours? Photographer Frank Schirrmeister lives in Berlin, and has done just that for the past four years. His images of Berlin, often considered Europe’s trendsetting city, ask us to consider the way a place is in a constant state of transition, of transformation. His collection of photographs, Plain City, is a way of “reducing the city to its plain, naked existence” in an effort to “approach the essence of the place.” Everything is in flux, constantly changing. Soon the light will change, the weather, people will fill the sidewalks, and vehicles will fill the streets. Schirrmeister says, “I often have the feeling that my own city doesn’t belong to me anymore, but to the forces of the global economy. When photographing Berlin, I am constantly trying to scrutinize and to challenge the popular image of the city. I explore the town beyond the facade, delve into the deeper layers of the metropolis.” Often we move through the day without thinking about our environment, the natural landscape and the structures within it. What would it take to transform our perspective of the mundane, of our everyday place, and view the world around us in a fresh light?
