Berlin: The Living and the Dead
(Two Seas Volume II)
Peter Shaindlin
ISBN 978-1944521042, July 23, 2017
Softcover, 40 pages, 7 x 10 in.
●
●
●
Photographed in Berlin between 2014 and 2016.
The aesthetic rhythm of this haunting visual ontology of Berlin binds the historical and the metaphysical.
Across the span of bifurcated day and night imagery, photographer Peter Shaindlin pits the human element in its purest form against the bitter backdrop of chill German winter, creating a collective mood at once of doubt and hope that exposes the past as it questions the future.
Artist Statement
BERLIN: THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
Peter Shaindlin
Every great city has a dark side; there is little character or authenticity to a sanitized, overdesigned metropolis. Berlin is unique in that its own shadowed subconscious is arguably due to the mind-boggling collision of history, culture, passion and ceaseless instability that it continues to endure yet survive. As chilling and austere as it is alluring and glorious, it proposes a dazzling series of contradictions, an inescapable accretion of life and death, good and evil, light and darkness. By pitting the raw, unadorned human form against its ocean of concrete and steel, visual expressions of the human saga against a backdrop of hope and despair reveal to us their stories and wisdom. Berlin, city of the living and the dead.
All of these images were taken during the bitter winters of 2014, 2015 and 2016, each session preceded by philosophical and artistic discussions with the subjects and crew, who then braved the frigid elements and curious onlookers with passionate and committed collaborative spirit.
Listen to an interview with Peter Shaindlin on The Conversation, on Hawaii Public Radio
Click here, then scroll down to Berlin: The Living and the Dead Photo Exhibit by Peter Shaindlin, or click the button below
The Exhibit at The Outpost Gallery at Hound & Quail, August 26, 2017
