Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic was received with military honors by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the German Federal Chancellery in Berlin on June 11th, 2014. Afterwards the two gave a joint press conference.
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic was received with military honors by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the German Federal Chancellery in Berlin on June 11th, 2014. Afterwards the two gave a joint press conference.
The Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Garibashvili, came to Berlin for a whirlwind 24 hour visit on 2 June 2014. German Chancellor Angela Merkel received him with military honors at the Federal Chancellory. They went off to talk, and then gave a press conference. A few hours later, Garibashvili met the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the Bode Museum on Museum Island. The evening was about giving back stolen cultural goods. To my great surprise, Georgia was giving back two books, part of a large collection recently found in the university library in Tiblisi. Silly me, I thought Germany might have some things it wanted to return.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel received the Prime Ministers of the the Ukraine (Arseniy Yatsenyuk), Georgia (Irakli Garibashvili), and Moldova (Iurie Leanca) this evening in Berlin. Though the excuse was an award, the press conference was about the EU’s policies looking eastwards and the role Germany plays there, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the EU’s major eastward expansion in 2004. The meeting comes on the heels of the Ukrainian presidential election, amidst increased fighting in the country’s east. The evolving situation in the Ukraine was clearly on everybody’s minds.
I had the chance to spend a few days in Prague earlier this month with two of my favorite people. I travel light photographically – often just with my Fuji X100. Especially when I can take the train (ah, internally borderless Europe), I always bring a film camera or two along. Even taking my 4×5″ is a lighter load than the three or four lenses and two or three cameras (and computer) I carry every day for press work. This time I brought my medium format film rangefinder, but also my X100. Here are a couple of shots of Prague, away from all the tourists (which is not easy to do…).
Amnesty International launches their Stop Torture campaign worldwide, including at a press conference in Berlin on 12 May 2014. The Secretary General of Amnesty International in Germany, Selmin Caliskan, discussed the legal and political effects of torture. She pointed out in particular that torture is still common in many countries which have signed the United Nations Convention against Torture and even have their own laws against torture – which adds to a distrust in the legal foundation of countries (Rechtsstaat).
A demonstration is held in front of the German Parliament against the recent killing of students in Ethopia by government security forces, who have been protesting the planned expansion of Addis Abeba into the sorrounding Oromo region. This protest on 9 May 2014 in Berlin, Germany, is part of a day of worldwide demonstrations by members of the Oromo community and their supporters, including human rights groups.
I spent the better part of this month photographing Berlinale, one of the country’s biggest and most important film festivals. The big winner this year was “Black Coal, Thin Ice”, hailing from China, claiming both best actor and best film. Though plenty of German stars are to be expected on the red carpet, the presence of Hollywood has become somewhat overwhelming. Photos from a festival like this fly around the wire within minutes, but the most interesting photos are rarely even picked up by an agency let alone sold to a magazine. This is a selection of some of my favorite shots of mine from two weeks in Potsdamer Platz. These are about light, about character, about something happening.
That’s it for the kind of interesting shots from the festival which won’t get picked up for publication. A group of young photographers took part in the project Close Up! and got to roam around Berlinale half playing the game of a press photographer and half taking a step back to observe and view the festival in its entirety as a subject. These projects are excellent, artistic, and a lot of fun. If you are in Berlin, swing by C/O’s new digs at the Amerika Haus to see more interesting, refreshing perspectives on Berlinale.
Even the conservatives in the Bundestag – at least those willing to speak this morning in the session on refugees in the EU – acknowledged that Germany needs to do something about the “refugee problem”. And they did not sound hawkish. They spoke of the need to address the dreadful conditions at Lampedusa.
“The” boat which sunk off the coast of Lampedusa on October 3rd, 2013 – a shipwreck in which about four hundred of the five to six hundred people traveling from North Africa to Italy – and the photos of that event, appeared to be the motivation of Merkel’s Union to act. The reporting of that event has likely been instrumental in changing the discussion.
But focus on this event alone, and frankly, on Lampedusa itself, has also dominated a discussion which has many more dimensions. One of the men at Oranienplatz, the year and a half old refugee camp in Berlin where refugees are camped out in a combination of lack of better choices and political protest, told me that about 100 of the 400 people on the boat he traveled on from Libya to Lampedusa died on the way. And his ship didn’t sink. This morning in the Bundestag, the necessity to act seemed to be more of a generic progressive, humanitarian need for members of the SPD (Social Democrats) and Grüne (Green Party). It was members of these parties who spoke of their experiences having actually visited the camps.
And Die Linke (The Left) appealed to ethics: that we know what is going on, people are dying. Money is flowing to “Festung Europa” – The Fortress of Europe – but not to people who need it. The Mediterranean is thoroughly monitored, the argument goes, and therefore we know where the boats are but do not help when they are sinking – and thus bear part of the responsibility for the deaths of people attempting to escape. Indeed, the discussion happened today because Die Linke, about half of this Bundestag’s meager opposition, proposed it. They chose strong words to label the request: “Das Massensterben von Flüchtlingen an den EU-Außengrenzen beenden – Für eine offene, solidarische und humane Flüchtlingspolitik der Europäischen Union”, that is, “End the mass dying of refugees at the outer borders of the EU: for an open and humane refugee politic of the EU”.
It is hard to disagree with much of was said today. The question is what will be done. We heard today that the solution is to better the situation in Africa, with varying amounts of feeling of responsibility the situation. We heard that Europe and Germany need to help Italy and Greece. From others, that Germany is just as responsible as Italy because this is a European question. That people should be able to get a visa which allows them to travel to a country in Europe where they have family, roots, or a common language. That language courses have to be made available. That there is an office in Europe that deals with securing borders but none for helping refugees.
The progress I can report on is that the discussion took place, and did not suffer from navel-gazing. Nobody said that it is not “our” problem. A few conservatives claimed that we are doing enough already. But nobody stood up and said, “This is Italy’s problem” or “This is Africa’s problem”. Baby steps. There was also very little discussion of specific situations – like Oranienplatz – within Germany.
Again, it is very hard to disagree with anything that was said. But the question remains what Europe will do and how Germany, in its unique historical and economic role in Europe, will help to shape that discussion and move forward.
It isn’t every day that a new film comes along in this millennium. So when one does, those of us who shoot film get excited. I think we owe it the people at Adox, who actually went through the trouble of developing a new black and white negative film, to give it a shot. I shoot a lot of film. I attempt art with it, and I teach people how to work with black and white film. And I do bring film cameras along to press shoots, which I often use for portraits if there is a quiet thirty seconds.
The neatest thing about the Adox CHS 100 ii film, other than being new, is the film’s spectral sensitization: it is close to flat, and goes up towards the blues. This could be great for photographing with an open blue sky on a sunny day. Here’s the tech sheet. If you are antsy to get to the punchline of the review, here’s the simple version: the film is promising, interesting, and will take some getting used to. Like any new film, really. If you are looking for a film for your first foray into into film photography then I wouldn’t suggest starting with this film – mostly because it will require experimenting, and the amount of information out there is relatively small by comparison to more established films like Tri-X or HP5.
I can give the film general high production marks It seems to be physically well made. I was working with 4×5 sheet film, so I can’t comment on the grain. My gut feeling is that it is fine but not extraordinary on the grain front, closer to an old-style grain than to new (which are both, incidentally, standards in my cameras).
Just one comment on price, because this is most of what you get if you search for info on this film in English. The price at FotoImpex makes it the least expensive sheet film you can get your hands on on in Germany. I know this isn’t the story at Freestyle, but I think it is worth mentioning – a lot of people in the U.S. won’t have a reason to try the film at its price there. Understandable, but I still think it is worth it to investigate when a new film comes around – we have no idea what will be available in a few years.
Let the games begin.
Exposure, Development and Shadow Detail
The take-home point of my experience spending a few days with the Adox CHS 100 ii is that the 100 part of the name may be a bit exaggerated. I tend towards low contrast, high range negatives, and I found that the shadow detail was difficult to retain at 100. I am getting results that are better for me by rating it at 50.
This testing was done of Christmas and New Years, mostly in Berlin – not exactly a Sunny 16 situation. The light has been excellent these days though, with a low hanging northern european sun hitting the streets just right, and a deep blue sky. Closer to Sunny 11, though. Even still, rating the film at 100 gave me little shadow detail. I was happier around 50.
Adox CHS 100 ii with Rodinal
The film reeked of Rodinal/Adonal – By Adox, made in Germany, Fine Art in the name. Plus for sheet film, grain isn’t usually a consideration. No matter what I did with CHS 100 ii and Adonal, the shadows were pushed down. I didn’t get the results I was looking for but I suppose that someone who has been using Rodinal for longer than I’ve been alive could get this right pretty quickly.
The shot above was my first attempt, shot at ISO 100, souped in Adonal 1+50 at 20C for 10 minutes in trays, agitating once a minute. This shot was on a cloudy, indeed drizzly day. The negatives came back at the upper limit of contrasty for me – the sky, which was indeed white, has little texture and the lampposts get lost. This time is closer to a N+1 (increased contrast) development.
Note that these are scans of fiber prints, not of negatives. I’ve done a rough brightness adjustment to get the scan to have similar tones to the print in my hands. This overdramatizes the issue of the shadows, but it is still quite present in the prints.
The upper scan was almost a straight print, I dodged the small lamppost at the end of the street by 1/3 stop to get some separation. The right hand side of the image, though, really suffered. I reprinted, dodging the shadowy right hand side of the image for a half stop. Here’s a detail scan.
The negative has some information there, but the tonal falloff is strong.
The Adox tech sheet claims 9 minutes for standard time, more like 8 minutes for sheet film due to being produced with one less layer. This is looking consistent so far: 8 minutes for N, 10 minutes for N+1. Great, except that the shadows were already disappearing, and that on a rainy day.
Standard Contrast Development with Rodinal
The next round was on a similarly overcast, rainy day. I shot again as metered (ISO 100), but this time I developed in Adonal 1+50 for 12 minutes in a tank with less agitation, more like every 2 minutes. The result is much, much better. It helps that those stairs are almost exactly that shade in real life, a tinge brighter than middle gray. But I still have the feeling that the shadows run away.
Shooting a Sunny Day
After that, the sun came out, so I would need to move towards N-1, maybe N-2. The standard zone method would be to shave off time, but truth be told, I do not want to be doing sheet development in trays in the range of 5-6 minutes. I am just not that accurate. Instead I decide to reduce agitation and increase the time again, a combination that leans towards stand development with Rodinal. So I shot at ISO 50 and souped 1+50, 20C, 14 minutes, with only a gentle sway of the tray, closer to every two minutes.
The results were useable but imperfect. For the sake of comparisons, I took the identical shot on HP5 and I gave it my standard N development (ISO 400, ID-11 1+1 11 minutes with constant inversions). The negatives are both dense and the contrast is a bit high for my taste, but the information is there on the negative. Not the easiest thing in the world to work with, but the information is recorded. The shadows, though, still run away. They were about a stop darker than the HP5.
Staining Adox CHS 100 ii with Tanol
I wanted to try one more thing: a staining developer like Tanol. Pyro is nearly impossible to come by on this continent, but Moersch does a great job locally on all kinds of funny chemistry. I used to shoot Agfa APX with PMK Pyro from the Formulary. I find the results of Tanol to be qualitatively similar to Pyro, with high accutance, large tonal range and little grain – and what is there, I find rather elegant.
Lacking much information, I jumped in, mixing Tanol at 1+1+100, souping for 14 minutes at 20C in trays. Truth be told, I took this as a total shot in the dark – it is a rough average of all the times Moersch lists for Tanol. Seemed like a good place to start, and indeed, it think it was.
The setting is a half-abandoned sports center on the corner by my lab in Berlin-Friedrichshain. Not every building has graffiti on the windows and not just the walls. I rated it to ISO 100 again, expecting trouble in the shadows. It was bright and sunny that morning. What I got was subtle, high accutance and a large range. The contrast is still too high though: this was printed with a filter 1, and some shadow detail is still missing here. Presumably shooting at ISO 50 and developing with a staining developer would get the job done if the sun is shining.
Thoughts on Adox CHS 100 ii
After a few days of testing, my conclusion is that the Adox CHS 100 ii film is highly capable, especially in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing. I imagine that my best use for the film would be in a studio, but everyone has different tastes. Using the sheet film, I’ll be rating it at ISO 50. The best results I got were Rodinal 1+50 12 min at 20C agitating every two minutes and Moersch Tanol 1+1+100 14 min at 20C agitating every minute.
Note again that Adox says times for the sheet film are 10% reduced with respect to roll – especially important if you are going to use my Adonal times with agitation every minute as a guideline.
I’ll publish an update when I’ve gotten results that I’m a bit more satisfied with – it is likely to be some time, but I wanted to get this out there right away.
This week saw the swearing in of the 18th Bundestag (German Parliament), after months of talks amongst the parties.
The results of the election on September 22nd left four parties in the corners of the ring, with Merkel’s Union coming just several seats short of an absolute majority. This is not a common occurrence here. Btw, calling her party “Union” is a little pedantic but should be done. The CDU, her party, has a sister party, the CSU, in Bavaria. Different parties and different heads of party but generally voting as a block.
The various arrangements have lead to a “Great Coalition” – a joining of the two centrist, middle-sweep parties: The SPD (Social Democrats) and CDU/CSU (Christian Democrats). You can guess which one is center-left and which one is center-right.
Before the leaders of the Social Democrats were willing to go into this slippery coalition, they drew up a contract with the Union (this happens) and then put it to a vote of their party members, presumably to cover their political butts.
The measure passed, ushering in a Great Coalition.
Monday saw the official signing of the Koalitionsvertrag, the Coalition Contract. Big table set up with lots of important people from each of the three parties – the two Unions and the Social Democrats. The signatories were the head honchos of each of the parties. For the CDU, this was Merkel, who has consolidated the power within the party rather thoroughly around herself. For the SPD, Sigmar Gabriel was the leader of the coalition talks in his role as the head of the SPD. Now in the Cabinet, he is Vice-Chancellor and now the custom-cut Minister for Business and Energy. Gabriel has emerged as the most prominent member of the SPD. He is also, as the name of his new position suggests, the person who will try to lead Germany towards its goals of energy reform, abandoning nuclear energy by 2022 and developing the green sector. The rest of the parties’ leadership signed on, too.
The third person sitting at the wheel was Horst Seehofer, head of Bavaria’s CSU, and the Ministerpräsident (Governer, really) of the state. Certainly on Monday he came off looking rather unpolished, as here, when he couldn’t find the correct page of the contract to show to the press, and Merkel had to help him.
With the contract of the parties signed, the parliament met on Tuesday. They had met a few times since the election to discuss special topics, but that was a bizarre constellation where the old ministers still had their seats – including those from the now ousted Liberal Party (FDP). Those sessions did not pass new laws. They were not, in some sense, full sessions of parliament.
Germany is a very democratic country. Tuesday’s vote, though, was not democracy’s strongest showing here. The President of the Bundestag, a position akin to Speaker of the House, proposed to vote on Merkel for the position of Chancellor, a yes or a no. At least it was a secret ballot election.
The results came back with 462 out of 631 voting for her. It is noteworthy that this represents 42 less votes than if everyone from the Union and SPD had voted for her. The other parties, who presumably did not vote for her at all are Die Linke (The Left) and Die Grüne (The Greens). This vote of more than 2/3 is likely to be the kind of votes we will see in the next four years.
While Germany only has one house, the Bundestag, this situation does not amount to a total mandate. Laws go through the Bundesrat as well, a federal council representing the states of Germany. The members of the Bundesrat represent the votes in state elections, which deviate considerably from the national vote – here, the Green party has considerably more power, and the Liberals (FDP) still hold seats.
This week also marked what would have been Willy Brandt’s 100th birthday. So after months of campaigning and bickering, Germans could rally around Brandt and remember a time when the country was more united (that was a joke). Brandt was the Mayor of West Berlin when the wall was built, the Chancellor who fell to his knees in Warsaw at the memorial to the ghetto and uprising, and whose policy of Ostpolitik helped lead to German reunification and reconciliation. While sponsored by Brandt’s own SPD and mostly attended by their own members, at least one person showed up who has definitively risen above party politics in his life, former President Richard von Weizsäcker – renowned for the speech in which he said that May 8th 1945, V-Day, was a day of liberation.