Berlin

          Anyone who knows me well knows I love the outdoors. I am very passionate about outdoor recreation and understand the importance of finding calmness regardless of physical location. Even though I love living in the city, I often find that the large amounts of people and the artificial places can be overwhelming. To find an escape, cities like Berlin offer an array of parks and gardens for their visitors. However, even when visiting these so-called “natural” environments, there are distinct traces of human impact. Although gardens are beautiful and made to relax us by transporting us away from the city, they are still fabricated by man for our enjoyment. Through my image portfolio, I aim to address the themes of these man-made “edenic” environments and the power struggle between nature and man. Many of my photos show irony, as well as humor towards ideal urban nature.

            When first coming up with a project theme, I knew I wanted to incorporate nature somehow. Berlin is a city full of parks and gardens. One-Third of the city's land is filled with forests, parks, and gardens. Every day on the train to school, we passed Plänterwald, an area of rented gardens that allow Berliners to take care of small, enclosed areas. I also found that the city is open to vegan and vegetarian eating, as well as healthy lifestyles that include biking and other types of exercise. Excited to experience the places where Berliners could escape the city, I was ready to explore the parks both near and far from my typically visited Berlin neighborhoods. I first ventured to Treptower park, the closest large park area near my apartment. Without a specific theme, I took shots of nature in ways that I thought seemed particularly interesting, hoping I could decide on a commonality of the collective photographs. After review, I noticed that although I was photographing nature, every photo still showed a trace of human impact. At first, this frustrated me, but I then decided to alter my topic to highlight these frustrations.

          The questions I aim to answer and/or consider in this project are: Is it possible in a city to experience nature in its purest form without also experiencing what was made by humans? To what extent does manipulating the natural world to live together with it ruin the view? I learned through this project that it is always hard to find a place of complete nature in the center of a city. I also wonder how hard it is to find places like this in areas outside of city centers. 

          Many of the photos you will see here are from an area just outside of the city center called “Gardens of the World”. This is an area of a large park where artists have created garden spaces that replicate gardens from different countries or time periods. Tourists and Berlin natives can experience different cultures and also a sense of freedom from the hectic and bustling city. Other photos are from other parks around Berlin. I never once felt isolated from the city here in Berlin, regardless of the number of parks, gardens and natural bodies of water I visited. This rise of man-made impact in the “natural” environments can also be related to the rise of materialism, industry and financial influence. It is scary to me the priorities people set because of money because parks typically do not make direct money but instead keep the well being of people over time. 

         Coming into this class, I did not have much of an interest in photography, nor did I have much photography experience. However, this project helped me understand the range of topics that can be explored through photography as well as the impact that documentary photography can have. I am interested in a career path in advertising and marketing and I know that so much of the impact that brands wish to leave with potential customers is based on photography. This urged me to learn the camera basics and also urged me to understand the impact that photography can have on the way that humans can consider issues.