Review of Berlin’s Wound
(Laura Krauss’ photography exhibition, Berlin’s Wound, is mounted until June 15th at the LINC Library Innovation Center, 501 8th Ave., Greeley, CO 80631 (888) 861-7323)
Berlin’s Wound
Review by David Caldwell
Photographer Laura Krauss invites us to explore a part of Berlin that is both famous and little known. The photographs in her exhibit Berlin’s Wound juxtapose enduring tangible traces of the Berlin Wall with empty spaces that betray few signs of the border’s once inescapable existence. More profoundly, Berlin’s Wound examines the fluid relationship between absence and presence. Ethereal memories and historical legacies persist, as do palpable scars. Such hallmarks of human experience exist between, on the one hand, our grasp of seemingly immutable physical evidence, and on the other hand our equally compelling awareness that what has disappeared still lingers, and that healing leaves a mark behind. In his poem “The Wall” (“Die mauer,” 1997), Reiner Kunze refers to the Wall as he thinks back to the first Day of German Unity: “When we took it down, we had no idea / how high it is / inside us.” Laura Krauss, in her description of Photograph 15, “I Spy with My Little Eye,” reveals a similar sentiment: “Although the vast majority of the physical walls and fences have been removed, making the Berlin Wall nearly invisible, many Berliners still sense its emotional shadow.” Her photographic “little eye,” the aperture of her Nikon N80, detects the ethereal and makes emotional shadow observable. At the same time, Krauss’s images disintegrate concreteness with an invitation to wander away from the observable -- to ponder, reflect, remember, and imagine.
Apertures allow us to peek through to the other side, and like the edges of an analogue photograph, the framed view determines how much we can spy. At the same time, a limited view through the gap stimulates us to imagine more. The photographer describes her image of the Bornholmer Strasse Border Crossing (329) as the site of “the first crack” in the Wall, which subsequently grew wider as the border was opened. In other images, see-through chinks are evident in remnants of the Wall hammered by souvenir harvesters. The collectors pierced a border that no longer separates East and West, rather past and present. In Photograph 77, “Reversal of Fortune,” one photographer confronts another through the aperture provided by a window in a McDonald’s hamburger restaurant. The view overlooks the former Soviet-American crossing point known as Checkpoint Charlie, where photographer Frank Thiel’s larger-than-life outdoor photograph of a Soviet soldier stands at attention. To use Laura Krauss’s interpretive terminology, this point along the path of the former Wall could be seen as a commercial coverup of the historical confrontation with communism. On the other hand, the Soviet soldier who seems to peer into the capitalist world of an American burger joint may represent the open wound of unresolved differences in a Berlin still marked by Cold War history. As another possibility, the contemporary normalization of this strange juxtaposition could indicate a healing scar.
Laura Krauss repurposed a battered metal fence as a display surface for her black-and-white images. Walking the length of the dividing line can conjure impressions akin to a cinematic experience. Long shots intermingle with images taken from medium distance, both of which are occasionally intercut with zooms into a detailed close-up. The ambulatory flow of her pace during photographic expeditions in Berlin, as well as the viewer’s engagement with the finished products, sometimes parallel the ability of motion pictures to take us seamlessly from one place to the next, and even from one time period to another. The circular strip of cityscape that cumulatively represents the location of the dismantled Wall includes transitions from dense urban settings to rural open space, from terra firma to invisible waterline borders, and from sites of fatal forbidden border crossings to other locales where sheep peacefully graze. An isolated historical structure such as the Alexander Haus (222), built by a subsequently exiled Jewish family in the 1930s, contrasts with a more recently settled residential neighborhood once bisected by the Wall (295).
A parallel display on the opposite wall of the exhibit space juxtaposes the black-and-white fence line with color images. The uniquely individual perspectives afforded by the photographer’s iPhone 11 were subsequently treated with Lightroom and Photoshop. The results include images of Wall graffiti that bear the constantly overlaid colors of enthusiastic spray painters who randomly contribute to layered messaging. Competing with the polychromatic graffiti, the silvery gray and dull blue of winter skies arch over the verdant green of mosses growing on fallen trees.
A third section of the exhibit includes numerous small-format black-and-white photos from the Berlin Wall path, interspersed with production materials that give the viewer a revealing glimpse into the photographer’s process.
In the latter years of the Wall’s existence, creative minds who contended with the structure often envisioned a porousness to the border. Guerilla artists hung window frames on the west side of the Wall, reminding West Berliners that they, rather than their Eastern counterparts, were the isolated population that had to look outward. At the same time, the imaginary windows suggested structural openings, perhaps even in anticipation of a door that might appear one day. Peter Schneider’s novel Der Mauerspringer (The Wall Jumper, 1982) reminds that attempts at East-to-West intra-German migration run counter to prevailing West-to-East weather movements. Schneider’s unconventional main character feels the wind under his wings when he jumps over the Wall from West Berlin to East Berlin. Perhaps unintentionally, Krauss playfully echoes the conceit in Photograph 30 “Can You Give Me a Leg Up?” It depicts two young people as they mimic an assent of the Wall, which, if successful, would land them on the eastern side of the former border. Five years after The Wall Jumper was published, director Wim Wenders secured permission to film in the no-man’s-land on the east side of the Wall. In Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire, 1987) Wenders’ main characters seem to anticipate the events of 1989, not only by strolling along both sides of the dividing line; they also traverse the fortified border as if the Wall were not there. Rock on to 1990, when the musical group Pink Floyd reunited where the Wall once stood and performed The Wall. The open-air concert momentarily sutured the wound of the hauntingly vacant Potsdamer Platz, once Europe’s busiest traffic intersection.
Earlier photographic projects likewise preceded Laura Krauss’s recent study of Berlin’s wound. In his collection The Berlin Wall, Shinkichi Tajiri’s images from 1969-1970 offer stark black-and-white views that often anticipate Krauss’s more expansive circumnavigation of West Berlin. With great difficulty, Matthias Kupfernagel wrangled permission from GDR authorities to photograph much of the encircling border from normally restricted vantage points. His collection Die Berliner Mauer 1989 finally appeared in 2009.
However, among the important differences between these predecessors and the work of Laura Krauss is an intentional temporal dimension. Photograph 110, showing a snowy thicket of bare trees in the industrial niche known as Rudower Höhe, illustrates the significance of her decision to shoot during the winter months of 2023-2024. The photographer writes, “As I disembarked the bus, I was surrounded by silence; the fresh snow muffling any speech or movement.” The absence of sound is remarkable in part because of the nearby presence of Germany’s largest metropolitan area. Additionally, winter naturally conveys the dialectical relationship between absence and presence that informs Krauss’s tracing of the Wall’s footprint and that further distinguishes her collection. Just as the absence of the Wall evokes its presence, we are more likely to imagine the presence of full summer foliage when observing a stark winter scene than we are to contemplate the absence of greenery while enjoying a summer day.
With fewer fellow trekkers present in the cold conditions, a winter study also provided the photographer with greater opportunities for solitude. One detects a smile of satisfaction behind her discovery that “No one was around.” Rather than deprivation, the absence of other people presents the photographer with the opportunity for intimate reflection on her surroundings. At Rudower Höhe the camera captures and generously shares an unexpected urban experience by an American photographer who stops by woods on a snowy evening. The quiet interiority of Berlin’s Wound seems to contradict our expectations for an investigation of a notoriously noisy chapter of external conflict, until one considers the intention Laura Krauss declares in her artist’s statement, to “collect emotions” with a “wondering pace.” The photographs in this exhibit did not arise from a checklist of important border sites, rather they are physical manifestations of an emotional pilgrimage. Notably, the word “wall” is absent from the title of this photographic collection. As fellow wanderers, we each create its presence as befits our particular sense of wonderment.
--David Caldwell