"We live in the cities. The cities live in us. Time passes. We move from one city to another, from one country to another. We change language, we change habits, we change opinions, we change clothes, we change everything. Everything changes. And fast. Images above all," the opening monologue from Wim Wenders' Notebook on Cities and Clothes with its reflection on identity and cities, images and transformations could be used as the perfect description for "Time Capsule. By the Side of the Road" an exhibition of photographs by Wim Wenders that will soon be opening at Blain|Southern, in Berlin.
The artist’s first exhibition in his hometown in over half a decade, the event features new and recent photographs by Wenders, shot in Germany and America. Memory and the way photographs can help us capturing the past and preserving it forever are the main themes of the exhibition that proceeds in some cases via juxtapositions of images.
The dense foliage of "Forest in Brandenburg" (2014) dialogues for example with a roller coaster structure in Canada, the trees in the former creating a natural forest compared to the desolate land of multiple metal poles in the latter; the cranes in Potsdamer Platz (1995) form a urban jungle of metal and concrete that establishes a new contrast with a sublime landscape near Wittenberge, Germany (2014), while "The Elbe River near Dömitz" (2014), depicts the reverse angle of a river as captured by Wenders forty years ago in his film In the Course of Time (Im Lauf der Zeit).
Several of the works in the exhibition feature places that have long-since changed, the images themselves therefore act as portals into lost moments or spaces. Wenders considers himself as "an interpreter, a translator, a guardian […] of stories" that places tell him and quite often his tales revolve around desolation and loneliness, with architectures and landscapes stripped of the presence of human beings, almost to emphasise the power of the physicality of the spaces surrounding us.
Another interesting point to make about this event is the scale of the work: Wenders' newest and most impressive panorama (four and a half metres in width) depicts the epic landscape of the American West – an area that he has extensively examined in his work.
As he states: "I think I had wide-open eyes for America, and 'the American landscape' in a general sense seemed extremely attractive to me, both as a photographer and filmmaker. Maybe the long absence from Germany of 15 years has enabled me to see places here with the same wide-open eyes. What has remained the same: in those landscapes, German or American, I'm still looking for the traces of civilization, of history, or people."
Wenders claims that the scale of some of his most recent works transports people to the places he discovered and learnt to love, but there are more themes to unveil in other sections of the exhibition, including loss, nostalgia and movement: a giant mountain of salt overlooks an eerily-quiet town; a perforated cinema screen stands disused and abandoned; a woman rests alone at the end of an American saloon bar.
Photographs - Wenders states - give him the chance to take these places to people, but, we may add, they also act as memory images capable of releasing emotional triggers in the viewers and stimulate their thoughts, associations, and visions from the past.
"Time Capsules. By the Side of the Road" by Wim Wenders is at Blain|Southern, Potsdamer Strasse 77-87, 10785 Berlin, 17th September - 14th November 2015.
Image credits for this post
All images by and copyright of Wim Wenders; courtesy of Wim Wenders and Blain|Southern.
Contemplation, Denver, Colorado, 1982, Silver gelatin on Baryt paper framed behind glass on Alu Dibond.
Drive-in at night, Montréal, Canada, 2013, C Print.
Forest in Brandenburg, 2014, C Print.
Roller Coaster, Montréal, Canada, 2013, C Print.
The Elbe River near Dömitz, 2014, C Print.
Drive-in, Marfa, Texas, 1983, Silver gelatin on Baryt paper framed behind glass on Alu Dibond.
Potsdamer Platz, 1995, C Print.
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