kodak 400tx on minox 35gt
after a year of camera failures and mishaps, one after the next, the boy got me a minox 35gt for my birthday. it’s a tiny thing that fits into a pocket, and one month in, i can safely say it is a-ma-zing. whereas my minolta or paulo’s canon seemed to shudder from the lack of light, the minox goes boldly forward, daring and defiant, taunting me… it’s a thing of beauty.
a couple of favourites from london. holga with rollei rpx 400.
starting a new tradition, inspired by this lovely series on kanpai kanpai.
in march, when germany was still clinging fiercely to its winter chills, we went to cologne for a day for the local postcrossing meetup. we didn’t have much time to properly explore the city, but our lovely host drove us around to see the very impressive brown coal open air mines of grevenbroich. they’re… huuuuge! so big in fact, that whole towns have been moved to make way for the excavation sites…
because the whole thing didn’t fit in a single frame of my holga, i made this rough panorama instead (click for bigger):
it looked a bit like the surface of an alien planet, with its ridges and indentations, both beautiful and haunting. from everywhere around the mine, you can see the steam-electric plants, puffing away clouds of white… we heard that the parents here tell their kids that’s where clouds are made – a rather clever cover to an otherwise dirty reality…
when you hear about the austro-hungarian empire, it all sounds so grand and splendid… the lovely danube, the habsburg monarchy… truth is, the grandeur is still there, but the degradation is so striking and overwhelming that one cannot but feel a certain sadness, and wonder… where did it all go?
budapest hit us like a slap in the face, our heads ringing with a million questions… so for now, i hope the photos will do the talking, while we meditate on the rest.
