Join me and my large format camera mate out for a stroll on a Sunday looking for interesting architecture and eventually landing on quite a famous Munich landmark in the brutalist space.
All photographers love repeating patterns, full stop. But especially large format photographers (in my humble opinion) and all the more so when there is good lighting and strong contrast. Recently I met one of my large format camera Munich friends (yes, there is more than one and we do have a “LF Munich group”) for a quick tour around some brutalist sites in the north part of central Munich.
We ended up at what I call “the Shell apartments near Leopoldstrasse”, which I discovered are actually called the Orpheus and Eurydike Estate (1971-73).
So what is ‘brutalism’ in architectural terms? More information on the history of the movement here, but in summary it relates to a postwar architectural style that emerged in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, focusing especially on minimalism and basically lots of concrete. There is actually a vast collection of people online who search the world for brutalist buildings to photograph, so these buildings we looked at have been photographed many times before. The style is not dissimilar to a previous post of the Olympic Park apartments, also built in the same time period for the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics.
Photos of our setup on my iPhone and otherwise the final black & white images shot on my Linhof setup with primarily a Linhof 150mm and 270mm lens on Fomapan 100 4x5 sheet film.
Photos of our initial setup below.
My first shot, using an orange filter. I am quite happy with the contrast here, the lighting was quite changeable when we started.
A similar shot from the back of the building.
The apartment block is actually quite a big estate that wraps around behind the “Shell forecourt”.
I used a longer lens here (270mm) and I like the different lighting, although looking at the final image I find it a bit busy overall, maybe I should have photoshopped out the various balcony plants in the way.
David’s setup with his Toyo 45A camera - I think he was shooting Fomapan 400.
My blog cover post - I really like how this shot came out.
We spent quite a bit of time round the side of one of the apartment blocks focusing on these cool staircases. I didn’t quite get my tilting right (I am still learning this skill) on the Linhof, but overall I am happy with the results.
A bit further down from the “Shell apartments” is another brutalist looking building, which we decided to setup camp at. After getting challenged by one of the people on the balcony as to what we were doing we continued to take some shots. Once you show people your massive 4x5 camera and pull out a dark cloth they seem disarmed (likely think we are a bit crazy) and tend to leave us alone.
On my first shot I left the lens open a bit too long (schoolboy error) so had to recover the image in post processing. I like the shapes in the second imagine, although found it hard to get close enough to be really minimalist focusing on the balcony patterns.
Overall observations
I really enjoyed this quick Sunday outing. One of our other large format group friends joined but unfortunately he was late and we were wrapping up as he came by. Note to self - I need to plan out more brutalist / abandoned places and buildings locations to get this large format crew out to, it is really quite cool to see so many 4x5 cameras out at once (say the geek in chief…).
I hope you enjoyed this short post and I look forward to more camera trips soon!
Thanks for stopping by,
Neil
