Claudia Jeczawitz Berlin, Potsdamer Platz

In autumn 89 I had lived in New York for five years and had worked two weeks a month in the editorial branch office of the Spiegel. Like all of my European friends, I increasingly had the feeling to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. My family had fled to West Berlin in the trunk of an American military truck via the transit route Magdeburg/Helmstedt in 1971. In Berlin the events went head over heels. Old friends from East Berlin appeared at the door of our home and the wall peckers tore up the hated Berlin Wall and one could move back and forth freely. 

In the weeks, in which I did my Spiegel service, steady interview requests came from different US-TV stations that were glad to have original soundtracks in their own city. When I heard that it is possible to fly back and forth to Frankfurt for 99 dollars as courier flyer for airlines, I got to Berlin in a two-week-rhythm. 

In order to counter the speed, I took pictures with my 9 x 12 plate camera. I was interested in the symbolic places like Glienicker Brücke, Potsdamer Platz, Bernauer Platz. Locations at which the ‘Wende’ took place without much audience.

The two blurred ‘VoPos’ (police officers), standing on Potsdamer Platz in the early morning hours, appear lost, not approachable. They are there but at the same time they have already disappeared.