Stephan Hederich Photographie Blog

This is some blog description about this site

Köln- Altstadt Nord, Grosse Plankgasse

Photo of the day, July 19, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  127 Hits

Köln-Altstadt Nord, Kettengasse

Photo of the day, July 13, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  139 Hits

Köln-Altstadt Nord, Friesenwall

Photo of the day, July 12, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  125 Hits

Gilbachstr., Köln-Neustadt Nord

Photo of the day, July 08, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  129 Hits

Schenkendorfstr, Köln-Nippes

Photo of the day, July 07, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

 
  155 Hits

Kunibertsklostergasse, Köln-Kunibertsviertel

Photo of the day, July 04, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  118 Hits

Ursulagartenstrasse, Köln - Ursuslienviertel

Photo of the day, July 02, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  121 Hits

Hamburgerstr., Köln- Ursulaviertel

Photo of the day, April 18, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  131 Hits

Friesenstr., Köln-Altstadt Nord

Photo of the day, April 17, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

Heute mal mit Widmung. Für meinen Freund Horst, der heute 58 geworden wäre.

  127 Hits

Neusser Str/ Blücherstr, Köln-NIppes

Photo of the day, April 14, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  135 Hits

Krefelderstr, Köln-Nippes

Photo of the day, April 13, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  158 Hits

Maybachstr, Köln-Agnesviertel

 

Photo of the day, April 8, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  139 Hits

Zonser Str, Köln-Sechzigviertel

Photo of the day, April 7, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  129 Hits

Knechtstedenstr, Köln-Sechzigviertel

Photo of the day, April 4, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  137 Hits

Thüringer Str, Köln-Nippes

Photo of the day, March 31, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

 

  134 Hits

Neusserstr., Köln- Nippes

Photo of the day, March 30, 2022

War scares Cologne 77 years past

  147 Hits

Knechtstedenstr./ Hartwichstr., Köln-Sechzigviertel

Photo of the day - 2022 edition.
War scares Cologne 77 years past

  148 Hits

Consolación del Sur, Pinar del Rio, Cuba, 2016

b2ap3_thumbnail_2016_S_0105_02.jpg

  0 Hits

Consolación del Sur, Pinar del Rio, Cuba, 2016

b2ap3_thumbnail_2016_S_0105_01.jpg

  1328 Hits

Isabel Rubio, Pinar del Rio, Cuba, 2016

b2ap3_thumbnail_2016_S_0103_02.jpg

  0 Hits

Isabel Rubio, Pinar del Rio, Cuba, 2016

b2ap3_thumbnail_2016_S_0103_01.jpg

  1082 Hits

Sandino, Pinar del Rio, Cuba, 2016

b2ap3_thumbnail_2016_S_0102_03.jpg

  1041 Hits

Memories – Series Category, Documentary by Stephan Hederich

  1343 Hits

Sandino, Pinar del Rio, Cuba, 2016 (I went to Sandino for a special reason)

b2ap3_thumbnail_2016_S_0102_02-Edit.jpg

  1228 Hits

La Palma, Pinar del Rio, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1226_04-Edit.jpg

  1259 Hits

Matanzas, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1214_04-Edit.jpg

  0 Hits

Matanzas, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1214_03-Edit.jpg

  1306 Hits

Matanzas, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1214_02-Edit.jpg

  0 Hits

Matanzas, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1214_01-Edit-Edit.jpg

  1310 Hits

Varadero, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1210_02-Edit-Edit.jpg

  0 Hits

Varadero, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1210_01-Edit.jpg

  1231 Hits

Perico, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1208_04-Edit.jpg

  0 Hits

Perico, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1208_03-Edit-Edit.jpg

  1277 Hits

read about the photos and the project!

 

 

Memory Stones: Monuments to Revolution

Contemporary Glimpses of a Changing Era

Just two months before the Iron Curtain came down, was when I began my studies in photography in West Berlin. Twenty-five years ago I witnessed, firsthand, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. I had a front-row seat as the former German Democratic Republic  (which had been anything but democratic) crumbled and moved towards the liberal democracy of West Germany and its Western allies. The changes were monumental, quite literally. Almost daily, I watched as monuments to the defunct regime came down in East Berlin. It was a time of great emotional and political turmoil as well as artistic upheaval. Some people celebrated the destruction of these monuments to a revolution gone badly, while others condemned the loss of these “memory stones.”

It is said that revolutions devour their children. But revolutions also usually end with the destruction of the monuments and statues, the public art forms, which are often used to glorify the past and their leaders, deserved or not. This has happened throughout history. It is what I observed then in Germany.

By the time the two German states reunited in 1990, almost nothing remained of “socialist” realism in the public art that had been so dominant in East Germany. It was as if, by removing all the monuments dedicated to the history, heroes and constructs of the so-called “Workers and Peasant State”, an entire age could be neatly exorcised from public memory.

However, as an art form, these monuments carried meaning well beyond their immediate and often crass political intent. They were rooted in the years between the two World Wars and expressions of what transpired during that time. Their removal was a deliberate attempt to remove the guilt and bad memories associated with them: memories of lack of freedom, austerity, shortages of goods and also reminders of who bore responsibility for the injustices.

While art inspired by revolution has all but disappeared in Europe, it is still to be found in Cuba. The many monuments still standing mark a last refuge of the ostentatious and larger-than-life monuments that were so prominent, and meaningful, on the other side of the Iron Curtain. In the winter of 2012-13, I had occasion to visit Cuba and the opportunity to examine some of the outdoor monumental art, dedicated to utopian ideologies. I marvelled at these fossils from an age I had believed was long since over. They evoked for me that time in Berlin I witnessed before the Wall fell, and they also raised questions.

Will these monuments, this art form, these memories of stone, disappear when Cuba opens up to the world? Will they be overrun by the push for a more capitalistic and Western liberal way of life? Or, will they last as reminders?

There is no way to know. But if the march of the history of Western influences in Europe and elsewhere in the world is anything to go by, it seems likely that they too will be dismantled and disappear without much of a trace.

With that possibility in mind, my project is to document these existing monumental relics of revolutionary art, before it is too late. I would focus on the monument works of each of fifteen provinces and the nation’s capital, La Havana, as well as the smaller ones, constructed by peasant farmers themselves in their local communities, (in their efforts to conserve their own dreams and memories).

This project deals with the past, with an era that calls for the kind of photography and a technique that is not common in our digital age. For this reason, I will work with a classic large format camera, a Sinar F1 on 4 x 5-inch b/w negative film, which affords me all the possibilities to express my personal view of the individual objects and images. Afterwards I would plan to scan the negatives for use in a book and for exhibition ink prints.

This project demands a slow speed to absorb the uniqueness of each region, their culture and artistic expressions, personalities and the character of each province and area.

These photographs were taken during my latest visit to Cuba in 2015-16. They were taken with my Sinar F1, I used a 90mm wide angle for 4x5 inch Kodak TMax 100 ISO B/W film. These typify the vision I have for the entire series of approximately 300 photographs of Cuba’s existing monuments.

  1446 Hits

Jagüay Grande, Matanza, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1206_05-Edit.jpg

  0 Hits

Jagüay Grande, Matanza, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1206_04-Edit_20160616-195444_1.jpg

  0 Hits

Jagüay Grande, Matanza, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1206_03-Edit-Recovered_20160615-130621_1.jpg

  0 Hits

Jagüay Grande, Matanza, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1206_02-Edit.jpg

  1296 Hits

Jagüay Grande, Matanzas.Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1206_01-Edit-Edit.jpg

  1152 Hits

Jovellanos, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1204_04-Edit-Edit_20160603-105256_1.jpg

  0 Hits

Jovellanos, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1204_03-Edit.jpg

  0 Hits

Jovellanos, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1204_02-Edit-Edit.jpg

  0 Hits

Jovellanos, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1204_01-Edit-Edit.jpg

  0 Hits

Cardenas, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1130_05-Edit.jpg

  0 Hits

Cardenas, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1130_03-Edit.jpg

  0 Hits

Cardenas, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1130_02-Edit_20160518-195151_1.jpg

  0 Hits

Cardenas, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1130_04_A-Edit.jpg

  1388 Hits

Jovellanos, Matanzas, Cuba 2015

b2ap3_thumbnail_2015_S_1204_04-Edit-Edit.jpg

  1372 Hits

Güines, Cuba, 2016

b2ap3_thumbnail_2016_S_0118_03-Edit-Edit.jpg

  1316 Hits

Consolacion del Sur, Pinar del Rio, Cuba

  1385 Hits

Can't remember where this was taken. Probably in on of those little jewels that we once had in my little home village

b2ap3_thumbnail_DSCF3268_20150613-145243_1.jpg

  1149 Hits

uhaul and mowers

b2ap3_thumbnail_StephanHederich_NAA_0587-2.jpg

  1441 Hits

realismocontrasurrealismo 10

My work about the British surrealist Edward James and his estate in San Luis Potosi - part  10

That is the last one. You made it through.

 

b2ap3_thumbnail_Stephan_Hederich010.jpg

 

 

  1211 Hits

realismocontrasurrealismo 9

My work about the British surrealist Edward James and his estate in San Luis Potosi - part  9

 

b2ap3_thumbnail_Stephan_Hederich009.jpg

  1304 Hits

realismocontrasurrealismo 8

My work about the British surrealist Edward James and his estate in San Luis Potosi - part  8

 

b2ap3_thumbnail_Stephan_Hederich008.jpg

  1389 Hits

Realismocontrasurrealismo 7

My work about the British surrealist Edward James and his estate in San Luis Potosi - part 7

 

b2ap3_thumbnail_Stephan_Hederich007.jpg

  1269 Hits

realismocontrasurrealismo 6

My work about the British surrealist Edward James and his estate in San Luis Potosi - part 6

 

b2ap3_thumbnail_Stephan_Hederich006.jpg

  1290 Hits

realismocontrasurrealismo 5

My work about the British surrealist Edward James and his estate in San Luis Potosi - part 5

 

b2ap3_thumbnail_Stephan_Hederich005.jpg

  1221 Hits

realismocontrasurrealismo 4

My work about the British surrealist Edward James and his estate in San Luis Potosi - part 4

 

 

b2ap3_thumbnail_Stephan_Hederich004.jpg

  1316 Hits

realismocontrasurrealismo 3

My work about the British surrealist Edward James and his estate in San Luis Potosi - part 3

 

b2ap3_thumbnail_Stephan_Hederich003.jpg

 

  1380 Hits

realismocontrasurrealismo 2

My work about the British surrealist Edward James and his estate in San Luis Potosi - part 2

 

b2ap3_thumbnail_Stephan_Hederich002.jpg

  1397 Hits

realismocontrasurrealismo 1

My work about the British surrealist Edward James and his estate in San Luis Potosi - part 1

b2ap3_thumbnail_Stephan_Hederich001.jpg

  1308 Hits

nothing in particular

b2ap3_thumbnail_IMG_0104_20150417-141449_1.jpgb2ap3_thumbnail_IMG_0104_20150417-141449_1.jpg

  1501 Hits

Tuesday June 24 in the Tatamagouche Library 6:30 pm

b2ap3_thumbnail_stephan-library.jpg

  1352 Hits

Join us on a Photo Safari through Egypt

b2ap3_thumbnail_STEPHANFB-Final.jpg

  1517 Hits

Egypt 2014

  1637 Hits

Cologne, Germany - S 13 Commute

b2ap3_thumbnail_1DSCF0070_20140322-150800_1.jpg

  1611 Hits

PARIS - DARKSIDE

b2ap3_thumbnail__HEE7737_20140318-235629_1.jpg

  1464 Hits

9504

  1624 Hits

Ihrestross - Colonia

b2ap3_thumbnail_2014_DSCF0051-Edit-Edit-3_406072.jpg

  1711 Hits

tief im Westen….. keine Sonne.

b2ap3_thumbnail_DSCF0052-Edit-Edit.jpg

  1808 Hits

wrong direction

b2ap3_thumbnail_DSCF1460-Edit-Edit-Edit-Edit-Edit-Edit.jpg

  1680 Hits