Do you ever think about training for anticipation?
On getting prepared for getting prepared when I'm out photographing the world
I still don’t know if it was a lucid dream or jet lag. It was likely both. I woke up around 11pm as if I’d been dunked in an ice bath, hungry, and wondering where I was.
I got out of bed and remember opening up a Lonely Planet Berlin guide to look up what could be open on a weekday night to suppress my 25-year-old hunger. I found a paragraph about a 24-hour restaurant that read like a diner and seemed to be only a 15-20 minute based on Mapquest. I just had to remember all the German names. Easy.
My apartment in Prenzlauerberg was the quintessential Eastern European commie block, made out of the concrete from Stalin’s eyeballs but with glamourously tall ceilings that reached the moon. I’d rented a place for a few months from a guy on Craiglist and I wired $400 to him for three months of rent via Wells Fargo. I walked into an Albertson in the San Fernando Valley with so much ignorant glee you’d think I was sending money over to my mom.
The apartment had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a washer and a dryer next to the microwave, but full of spy novel charm. It was everything the world isn’t now; minimal by an iron fist.
I don’t recall the exacts, but this was January. I remember it feeling like my face was being stung by a thousand hornets and cold piercing every Los Angeles-purchased t-shirt and hoodie I could put on at once. That hoodie was shit-brown, purchased on from a sales rack at Urban Outfitters, and my obsession with it let to lots of holes. Perfect Eastern European winter gear. I grabbed my camera, a bag, and some Euros, and ventured out.
My memory of Berlin fades a bit as I’ve gotten older, but I never forget the rush of anticipation as I set out to find some mystery travel book diner. Anticipation can feel like a drug, coursing through veins looking for an out. Maybe it’s more like a virus, infecting a host and trying to find any way to infect the world around it.
I never found a restaurant that night, nor did I remember any of the streets I’d written down in a notebook. I don’t remember seeing many people out either. Who goes out on a weekday at midnight when it’s freezing to look for food?
Fucking tourists.
I remember people I met and photos I took, but I don’t recall the minutiae of washing clothes or getting groceries, or ordering doner kebabs, although I’m sure I did that almost daily. I don’t remember the long walks as clearly as I once did but I can recall certain sites and sounds. I know exactly what it felt like to see the Berlin wall, alone, with no one to share that experience with. What I can’t shake, and what I’ve held as fuel for this many years, is the manner I began to manifest and wield anticipation.
That night, I finally found a small coffee shop open, bakers doing the overnight work for the next morning’s rush. A lovely German woman asked me what I wanted, in English, of course. They always knew. The shop was small, with a few stools at a counter, a refrigerator, and a few bakers silently kneading and baking. I sat and wrote for a bit about whatever insecurities I was feeling at the time, or notes about things to do and photograph. It was during my time in Berlin I started writing down shot lists – Alexander Platz, people riding bikes, graffiti and bikes, doner kebab stands, beautiful people. It’s an activity I still do to this day.
I won’t pretend to remember and I don’t know where that notebook may be. But I can tell you I recall a feeling that has been with me for a long time. Sometimes before I know I’m about to do something completely unknown, I plot. I think about previous things I’ve experienced, like a smell, or a feeling. And I try and use those past experiences to help foreshadow a new version of it I may see. When I think about anticipation, I think about seizing moments, giving a new episode in my life a giant bear hug, and being ready for it. I think about preparation for the erratic or fantastic. I think about missing photographs I’d love for the rest of my life but won’t have the opportunity because I hadn’t prepared. Or I’ll think about deliberately not taking a shot, of which I do a lot, because I am a selfish bastard and I the thing I saw I want only for myself.
Just the other day I was walking around Capitol Hill in Seattle and I had been shooting for close to 20 minutes. Streets I always shoot, which I’ve started building as my little haven. I might even be getting territorial about it. But after feeling good about some of the scenes I’d photographed, I spotted a family, old and young, with a child, on what looked like a walker, and the most joyous little two to three-year-old screaming his face off as if on a rollercoaster. It took a split second for me to raise my camera but I hesitated. I didn’t press the shutter. I didn’t really do anything. Another second and the kid was squealing joyous laughter and side-by-side to me. Then behind me. Then down the street with his family, heading home, or to dinner, or wherever the family time was headed. I’d missed the shot. Anticipation got me to notice but something held me back. Maybe I got nervous, or maybe I just wanted to see a kid happy with his family and not ruin it for them. Maybe some empathy won out.
But that scene is now mine.
Yet the next time, I’m probably going to get that shot.
What I’m reading
The Atlantic has a great retrospective on Ernest Cole, a South African photographer who died in exile after showing apartheid South Africa from the lens in the 60s.
Photographer and artist Brian Karlsson likes to photograph trash and dig through it to photograph peculiarities he finds interesting. When I saw this, I thought, “Hey, I think I have things in common with this guy.” I don’t dig through it, though, for anyone wondering.
Four Tet announced a new album. The first single is below.
Happy Sunday!
This was great. Have you seen Next Door about gentrification in Prenzlauer Berg? I think you'd be into it: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/next_door_2021
Great meditations on community, class, fame, and sense of belonging.