This could be the first paragraph of a report of the German secret services during the Cold War. But it’s not. It is the photographic eye of Despina Tasoudi in today’s German capital. A gaze that is looking at the East to a city that severed souls, everyday life, its own self. With the wall.
This session is a strolling of the photographer to the East Berlin. A jump beyond the wall, but this time in the opposite direction of history. Despina Tasoudi focuses on how much a place can maintain the climate that political development shaped. He searches for and looks for all these elements with a non-western character and possible touches of Russian influence.
Certainly there are elements such as densely structured residences, smell of communism. The brands of cars whose factories are not in Germany. The economic migrants at the train stations, a forgotten t-shirt possibly from some flea bazaar. Spots that she don’t expect to find in a metropolis of capitalism. But are there. Perhaps Berlin owes that intimate feeling that surrounds you to all these clashes and struggles the city has experienced compared to other German cities. That’s why behind the old, big blue wooden doors artists from all over the world make their studios.
The photographer is impressed by the growth rate. New buildings, new roads, new life, despite the economic crisis that is taking place in Europe and especially in her country, Greece.
On the return flight she is looking again at her photographs and she has some time to think about her trip to Berlin. Multi speed Europe, economic insecurity. Fasten your seat belts. Landing for the photographer in her East Berlin.
About the author:
Despina Tasoudi was born in 1982, in Drama a small town in Northern Greece. She started to photograph in 2006 and she began her studies on photography in 2009 at ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) in Thessaloniki. She has participated in different exhibitions in Thessaloniki and also in other cities in Greece. She works as photography.
