Exhibit of Gerrit Engel’s Berlin Photographs

 Siam Discovery Center. Bangkok, Thailand. May 31, 2013. During two visits there, I've spent quite a bit of time in Berlin, one of my favorite cities. I favor old, classical buildings, such as the US capitol building, and extravagant, monumental Buckingham Palace. Every once in a while, a modern building grabs me (e.g., Sydney Opera House, anything by Frank Lloyd Wright, the I.M Pei addition to the Louvre). Obviously, when it comes to architecture, my tastes are pedestrian. In spite of this, however, I was impressed by how Berlin has blended the modern with the old, how a Baroque building could be enhanced by a starkly modern neighbor. 

Architect-photographer Gerrit Engel has published five photography books, and his specialty is photographing buildings, that is, taking a picture of a building as if it were a person sitting for a portrait. Of his many pictures, 42 photographs of buildings in Berlin, made up the exhibition at Bangkok's Siam Discovery Center, which was put together by the Goethe Institut of Bangkok. I found the exhibit quite affecting. I recognized several of the buildings, and these photographs made me look and appreciate (or not appreciate) the building as a building, an individual creation of some architect's imagination, and devoid of the busyness inevitably engulfing any building in a large metropolis.

Berlin Philharmonic Hall (1963) Hans Scharoun

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1968)

Walter Gropius (1969)

This architect was trying to get back at his mother-in-law.

This fellow is taking out his nightmarish fantasies on the public.

I.M. Pei (2003).

Daniel Liebeskind (1998).

Renzo Piano (1997).