B&W Europe Photos

I still haven't finished posting my photos from Europe on here but here's a few of the B&W 120 film photos made with my Mamiya 645.

A note on my film: The borders of the negatives are shown because my particular view of photography requires that I show what I saw when I took the photo. Hence, the images are not cropped. I rarely if ever dodge and burn. The only adjustments I make are to brightness and contrast - especially since my film of choice is the newer Kodak TMY-2 whereas this is Kodak's older 400TX, so a lot of my film turned out grainy and overdeveloped - I was being willfully dense when I developed it. C'est la vie.

The following three photos are of the Sony Center in Berlin and were hand held at night...

The Cathedral in Cologne.

The lead covering on Renzo Piano's Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.

Richard Meier's Jubilee Church in (the ghetto of) Rome.

Pantheon in Rome - excellent.

Random Rome. Plants grow everywhere and here some vines had turned into a shade for this small gas station. It reminds me of those bridges that people grow in Asia.

Pompidou Center in Paris by Piano and Rogers. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter's Tietgen Dormitory in Copenhagen. This was one of if not my favorite contemporary building I've ever visited. The concept/program actually works to form a community.

BIG's (Bjarke Ingles Group) 8 House in Copenhagen.

Big's Mountain Dwelling in Copenhagen.

Paris - Day 6 / Berlin - Day 1

I went on a walk from my hostel to the Bastille and on the way I found this gathering of really interesting shops that all had fringe American trends or culture as their main idea. I find it humorous that Parisians both revere and revile Americans.

Chrome bags and fixie bikes.

New vintage style bikes.

This was just a cool shop. They literally had ever type of camera I knew in the window. They had a tilt-shift lens for my Mamiya, all models of Leica's, a Mamiya 7 II, and even a Hoizon; and the store was a true hole in the wall.

The Bastille.

A demonstration that turned into a protest which then turned into a conflict between the Algerians and police after I left. I went back later and all the sidewalks were wet (had to be cleaned) and police were patrolling the area heavily.

Pompidou Center - detail of how the massive trusses link to the tensions cables.

Carlo Mollino, 1950

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe/Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Designed by Peter Eisenman.

The Reichstag - it's impressively huge. Look at the scale of the people next to those columns.

Paris - Day 5

Just a building I found on my way to Cimetière du Père-Lachaise.

Apparently ravens like peanuts and raisins. I got a chance to see how smart they are. Conclusion: very smart.

All the girls kiss his grave... regardless of the fact that he liked guys.

It was weird to be so far away from Chicago at the grave of someone who's work (Sunday Afternoon on the Island on La Grande Jatte at the AIC) I'm very familiar with and see often. It was like meeting a friend for lunch in a far away city.

Eglise Saint-Eustache - I went to church on a Sunday. In this photo the organ pipes are over my head. When they played it was a completely ethereal experience. They were loud, full of utterly deep bass that went right through you, and it echoed off the vaults and reverberated in your chest. It's better than any speaker system I've ever experienced and I can see why people spent 200 years building places like this.

Update: I checked out the site to see if I could hear it again. It seems like they don't play it so often and if all the info is correct this is what I heard played:

Sunday, May 30 - Francesco Filidei interpreter

• Charles-Marie WIDOR : Symphonie pour orgue n°2 opus 13:Prélude-Pastorale-Andante-Scherzo-Adagio-Finale Charles-Marie Widor: Organ Symphony No. 2 opus 13: Prelude-Pastoral-Andante-Adagio-Scherzo-Finale

This is Les Halles - "the belly of Paris". There'ye constructing a huge canopy to help revitalize the area. I kind of liked it. The gardens are a tad retro and uncomfortable but the area surrounding is very organic and is nice to walk around.

Eglise Saint-Eustache

Paris - Day 3 & 4

The internet is broken at my hostel so I'm just going to post photos and edit them later.

Ledoux tollhouse near the Catacombes.

This is the archaeology building of the University of Paris near the Luxembourg Gardens.

The Pantheon by Jean Sufflot.

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève by Henri Labrouste.

The Academy of Design.

The entrance to the Louvre by I.M. Pei.