Awareness of a street’s history increases our ability to take street photos with a deeper sense of understanding.
Knowledge of the history that surrounds a street develops layered thoughts that can serve as a snippet of history that creates an anecdote about the place, or it can go deep and give us so much context that we feel it when we take the photo.
If you want to discover the Secret Past, Capture the Present: Boost Street Photography with Local History, and add weight to the photos you take, then follow these ideas.
When you look at a building in a street, and know nothing about it, you can still make your own judgements about the architecture. When you do this, you will shift your mind into gear and start seeing the street and its designs with fresh eyes.
In future, when people look at your street photography, they can see that the buildings and streets, the architecture, and the environment is the result of decades and centuries of development.
architecture reflects the times we live in – sometimes, we are fortunate enough to find streets that are still populated with buildings from the past – even one old building that is starting to show wear and tear could be worth investigating to increase your knowledge.
Many street photographers limit themselves. They get bored because they believe they need to stick to the rules of what somebody told them street photography is – don’t do this; if you do, you’ll be cutting your nose off to spite your face.
I love to hang out around Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. I take shots of groups of people, and the buildings. Today’s buildings on Potsdamer Platz are all newly built and the architecture is modern. The Platz itself has a strong history of events.
In the 1920s Potsdamer platz was a big place to have fun. It was full of cafés and venues for music and dance, drinking, parties, and simply meeting friends.
In the 1838 it was the location of Berlin’s main train station. Train stations create circles in cities, places where people gravitate and meet, businesses see opportunities at stations because there’s a lot of people hanging out and waiting for other people.
The platz became so popular that the wealthy and affluent decided to build villas close by in the Tiergarten, thus creating a new address that had some prestige attached to it – Potsdamer Platz.
The world’s first traffic light was installed at Potsdamer Platz. The place had become so popular, and with trains coming and going, and the advent of cheaper cars for people, the cross roads became congested enough for the Berlin Senate to take action to control the flow of traffic.
If you take time out to check out your own city’s history, you’ll discover that there are some gems of knowledge to had about long forgotten places, like little secrets that have been forgotten or neglected.
The past informs us about the present in as far as where we are today comes from a line of thinking, politics, and civilian life that either zigzagged its way through history, or cut through with some extreme ideas of society, Berlin and communism are strongly associated in history.
So is freedom of speech and thought, Berliners are a hardy lot. They want to live and express themselves through work, living, and art, to experiment with lifestyles and ways of thinking that might not be the same as the neighbours thinking, but it is tolerated; it’s just at certain points in history some people have wrangled power enough to dampen the spirits of Berliners for time, then they rise up again.
During the Cold War period of history in Berlin, it became more and more obvious that the Russian sector of Berlin would be ruled by Siveit politics. In spite of this, all Berliners were free to move between each sector unhindered.
In 1953, local residents, mainly living in the East Zone of German cities, rose up and revolted against the Soviets and the East German leader Walter Ulbricht. The push towards a collectivism in production and farming was unacceptable to the residents of East Germany.
The uprising was an almost successful attempt to overthrow the leadership of Walter Ulbricht, but ended in the Soviet troops and East German troops attacking the protesters. Killing over 120 civilians.
When I know these details and facts, and I meander through the streets of Berlin, I feel a deeper connection to everything that I’m looking at, experiencing. I know there are layers of history, of facts and people from the past who matter very much, and who may have played a role in how this city still exists today.
History helps you to discover the Secret Past, Capture the Present: Boost Street Photography with Local History