Christian Catafago

Few weeks after going to Paris, a long week-end without work gave me a well planned occasion to rediscover, a couple of years after the DIVIDED II: BERLIN series, I only had time to ride the circle line of Berlin concentrating fully on this journey.

The camera chosen, a Rolleiflex giving a square medium format negative was certainly not adapted to low light photography and discretion. Yet, I felt the reversed viewfinder obliged me to “bow” in front of the subject while taking pictures and in addition, I had to be seated to capture images: by these choices, I put this series apart from street photography and its well known aggressiveness, rudeness and lack of consideration for the subject. The subway line would zip from east to west-berlin back and forth with frenzy. I could only imagine this subway when the wall was erected doing the same trajectory without stopping “on the other side”. Nowadays one comes and goes, there are no boundaries except in the mind of the users.