Berliners - the series 'if I could understand you, I could love you'

I have not learnt to embrace, as perhaps one is supposed to do in this time, my parallel digital world, finding it of little interest. This is probably very foolish but reflects also my love of the real, the world where physicality obstructs and forms the patterns of my work and the world I live in. Over a year ago I began a series of portraits of Berliners. Having spent a lot of my youth moving from one corner of England to another I was often struck by mine and others categorisation of the type of people who live or came from one place or another. We have all heard it said " hey, they are hard but once you get to know them they're your friend of life", or something in the vain of. Berliners have a reputation, but to define this is to follow a foolish path which illustrates more ones own failings and preconceptions.

The series 'if I could understand you, I could love you' is intended to fail. That is the point, to understand the uselessness of trying to determine a person by exterior factors. The approach to the portraits was to purposely understand that reality would undermine the mechanism employed, exposing more through it's failings than could possibly be achieved by mark of success.

For each portrait, the sitter had to be photographed 40 times onto the same sheet of film. Proceeding each exposure a line was drawn with thread marking the position at that moment of an element or feature of the sitters face. I was constructing a measured plan of a Berliners face. But this is real life and thankfully we move, we do not stay still and any mark is only that of a reference to a moment in time.

The series is ongoing, but a selection were shown as part of the European Month of Photography festival last year in the Kommunale Galerie Berlin. The group exhibition entitled '12 Antworten auf Berlin' was curated by Hansgert Lambers and Axel Sommer.

                 exhibition view. Kommunale Galerie Berlin. 2012 - European Month of Photography

                                 exhibition view. Kommunale Galerie Berlin. 2012 - European Month of Photography