Lens Artists Challenge: Memories
Do we take visual notes? Do we need pictures as a memory aid? Even after getting my first camera in my teens, I could not be fully convnced that a photograph should serve memory; after all, that’s what our heads are for, isn’t it? I always had a feeling that photos should be pictures in their own right, going beyond note-taking. After reading Susan Sonatg’s essays on photography, I was even more convinced that it should be so. I look for pictures “in their own right” – or compose them in my miniature photography.
The pictures I share today are from real life though, and they might be about memory: The coffee pots I know first hand from way back when my aunts, uncles and friends’ parents used them. The dark hues of industry I also know from working factories. This is a defunct coal mine, an architectural landmark that serves severeal new purposes today (and memory).
The title I chose literally means “pot”. We also slangily use the word for the Ruhr Area: Kohlenpott – Kohle denoting coal; although they also cooked a lot of steel here. The (inaccurate) picture was that the area was covered by a huge cloud of smoke. And Düsseldorf, the city I returned to alomst five years ago? It’s been called the Ruhr Area’s desk.
