Aidan Dunbar

So I’m back from Berlin - have been for about a week now - and I have a few photos to show you.

I decided to take a risk and shoot solely medium format film on the Bronica, with 40mm and 80mm lenses. I’ve been using this camera more and more of late and only recently have I felt comfortable using it as a primary camera. Previous occasions I have taken to shooting film have led to heartbreak, but I’m getting the hang of it and I’m happy with the outcome of the developed films that have been developed so far. Two slide films are winging their way to Peak at the moment, and should be back any day now.

Berlin itself, what a great city. For starters it is tall - the majority of buildings in the city and central suburbs are at least three or four storeys high - and that is a positive for me. It makes it feel like a ‘real’ city, and very different to nearly everywhere in the UK I have visited. It is also incredibly easy to get around, with the combination of extremely efficient trams, buses and both underground and overground trains.

It was cold all week, with temperatures dropping to -15°c at some points (taking into account windchill) and there was snow cover and thick ice absolutely everywhere. Had there not been so much snow back home in Leeds only a month before everyone might have been excited; instead after the second or third time falling over on the ice it started to get a bit tiresome.

Highlights probably include Victoria Bar on Potsdamer Straße - home of suave décor and generous measures in cocktails - and of course a sneaky trip to Spreepark, the abandoned theme park in the south east of the city just next to the river. A little more on that in a little while.

The C/O Gallery on Oranienburger Straße was also a worthwhile - until the end of this month they are showing a retrospective of Don McCullin’s work which is an interesting viewing. Included are contact sheets and press clippings. Also showing is an exciting exhibition by Jonas Bendiksen illustrating the life in slums around the world with a unique claustrophobic method of presentation. Images are projected onto four walls of a small space while one of the photographed characters tells you about the area and the circumstances they find themselves in. It is hard not to gloss over the fact that these are real people though, and this probably wasn’t helped by the overenthusiastic voice actors, but definitely worth a look.

Fuji’s Acros B&W negative film shone, as always, with its smooth grainless texture and dreamy metallic tones as did Kodak’s Ektar 100. I’m still glad James got me hooked on this one as it was a little touch and go in places. We’ll have to wait and see what the slides (Astia 100) come out like.

A little bit of an issue with the Acros however, as it seems there are chunks of emulsion missing from certain negatives. It’s likely to be operator error at some point while developing the negatives rather than the film itself but it is still a bit disappointing that this was the only film it happened on. Printing these images in the darkroom will be interesting as the missing emulsion shows up as black rather than white, making spotting rather an impossible task.

Great fun overall, gutted for James who broke his foot slipping on the ice, and I think I might be going back sooner rather than later (and with a tripod.)

See Flickr for contact sheets as part of the 100% initiative.