Never ending story, repeat, Never ending story, repeat

We all have our routines and one of mine is coffee first thing early of a morning. I turn away from the window as I get out of bed and had no cause to judge the weather and it's consequences. Aware more of the cold touch to the floor boards through my hesitant feet, I procured the coffee pot from it's place of rest and lifted my gaze out of the kitchen window. A never ending story. From when I finished writing the previous post the night before, Berlin has seen the air thick with frozen particles. I would be out about this very moment, photographing, but other commitments allow me not to re-live the Yorkshire Dales of last Easter.

Never ending story

                                                        Yorkshire Dales, UK. andy rumball 2012

It seems this winter has no intention or need to step aside and allow the cycle of life to turn it's wheels on it's infinit trail. I glance this March night through the windows, shielding me from the frantic flow of the fine snow particles on the cold wind currents. I think of this as a long winter yet a year ago on a visit to England and the Yorkshire Dales over Easter and the new green hills of my home land were not to be seen. In the matter of a few hours the land before my eyes was reduced to a delicate pencil sketch. The brutal beauty, monocrome and cold teased me as I fought with wet lens and wind to capture just something of that truly original Easter weather. Maybe, just maybe I will have a second chance this Easter, here in Berlin.

      Yorkshire Dales, UK. andy rumball 2012

      Yorkshire Dales, UK. andy rumball 2012

Exhibitions, marking the passage of time

Just as this blog notes each action in time, so the last year has been marked out with the my actions, aims and mistakes. It has been a full year, too full to summerize here and now in one extended post. Instead I shall litter the present with the markers of the past.

Two exhibitions at the end of last year (November 2012) would be a good point to begin, but in my searching for the images to illustrate my words I discovered the above proposal for an installation. It was to be installed in the gallery space in Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin and was the second stage of a project called 'New Work', first exhibited in Basel. The physical elements of the work still exist and are able to be re-incorporated, morphed into a new aspect of the project which wishes not to be defined but constantly developed. I'd very much like to find an opportunity to bring the work out of it's secure surroundings and weave it into the fabric of everyday life in some way, expose it to the elements. Something for me, for tomorrow, from the past.

Betting on a three legged horse

Only a fool or God would bet on the weather and perhaps an englishman. Three times I traveled across Berlin and waited in vain for the snow that had been promised to materialise. It did in parts but nothing to the extent I was looking for so left each time empty handed with no shot. Then yesterday comes my dream snow from nowhere and I am nowhere to be seen near my snowing picture location. I think I'm better at guessing the colour of the next car that comes round the corner than the next 2 days weather. We haven't had so much of the white stuff this year and I sense a part of me looking forward to those first marks of spring. But the snow brings with it a new twist to the view one has and even as it melts and fades, it's dirty ridges and layers make an ever changing architecture.


heavens shadow nr. I+II.  2012 (rooftops of Berlin)

Frozen Feet, Frozen Moments

The winds carried winters fist this last couple of weeks to Berlin and let us know in no uncurtain terms that these months are for gloves not garden parties. But there are those who 'fly in the face' of such barriers and fight to have their moment of freedom. 

tomorrow you will be different. type c. IV, V  (kiteflyers. 2012)

After Hours

They say if you can't beat them, then join them, so I guess you can sort of say that with the below image and my day, last friday. So you find your location, you monitor the weather and you wait for the most promising day. This day was ment to be friday, as I awaited the air to be thick with snow for a new picture for my series on Bee Hives. It did so in the very early, dark hours of dawn but then only presented a picture postcard of blue skies and white over all. They promised more to fall, I went, I waited, I waited and I waited. I did take some shots but they were not what I was after and as dusk draw in I had to admit defeat on this occasion. But the evening light and the dark shadows of night offer something special and an insight to man's alienation and dominance over his environment and with it a subject in it's self.




after hours Nr. 1B. berlin 2011.

With mud and imagination

There stood a fooball pitch in north Oxford, not very far from the inner ring road and Summertown where if you were to go back some 30 odd years you would find a lone young boy. The goal posts played no part and the mud and misrable weather were no obstacle to that boys sense of freedom and escape from the binds of this world. For many an hour he embraced and in the same moment denied the elements of our world and let nature conjure the infinite in the finite. On many a wet weekend you would find that boy flying his kite. I have never forgotten that feeling.




tomorrow you will be different. type c nr.2 and 3 / first phase