Capsule of Time: Democracy in Pause

April 29th, 2020. Berlin held its breath. The city that never sleeps was sleeping—empty streets, silent squares, the Spree flowing past the Reichstag as it had for centuries, indifferent to human concerns. I hadn't been on the water in weeks. Lockdown regulations kept my Camera Obscura boat docked, my photographic paper sealed in darkness, my hands still.

But that morning, something shifted. Not in the regulations—those remained. Something in me. A restlessness. An urge on moving that wouldn't quiet. If the world had paused, perhaps this was the moment to witness the pause itself, to capture Berlin breathing differently.

"So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."
— T.S. Eliot, East Coker (Four Quartets)

I opened the aperture. Eight seconds. Not seven, not nine. Eight seconds is my portal to presence, my window into time's actual movement. During those eight seconds: the earth continued its rotation—approximately 3.7 kilometers at Berlin's latitude. Light from the Sun, having traveled 8 minutes and 19 seconds to reach us, reflected from the Reichstag's stone and glass onto my paper. The Spree's current shifted my boat perhaps 30 centimeters downstream. My heart beat eleven times. I breathed once, fully.

Looking back now, as this image becomes the official Bundestag Christmas Card 2025, as it enters the permanent collection of the German Art Collection of the Bundestag, I'm struck by time's strange loops. An artwork made during democracy's fragility, chosen by democracy to represent itself.

In 2020, Motiongraph #210 was acquired for the permanent German Art Collection of the Bundestag. In 2025, it was selected by Julia Klöckner for the official German Bundestag Christmas Card.

From the Artist's Diary

It was a lonely, restless night. December 3rd, 2015. Sleep wouldn't come—my mind racing under a full moon, my better half an ocean away. Around midnight, I left my Bushwick studio with rolls of photographic paper loaded in the Camera Obscura van.

"So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."
— T.S. Eliot, East Coker (Four Quartets)

Crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, Manhattan opened up ahead—immersed in Christmas lights, electric and alive. No heat in the van; fingers numb on the wheel. Yet the glowing colors overpowered everything—the cold, the doubt, and ignited the trance state of my solitude—the place where my creative spirit comes alive.

I turned onto Park Avenue and drove south for block after block, letting the paper drink in the flowing light for eight full minutes. Only once did I stop—at a red light—where the illuminated trees burned their presence sharply into the emulsion, anchoring the dance of motion around them.

That cold December night ten years ago taught me something I carry forward: the most challenging moments often hold the greatest gifts. When I share this work with you now, I'm offering what that freezing, lonely night gave me—proof that presence transforms isolation into creation, restlessness into art, darkness into light.

Capsule of Time: A Note from the River

On June 14, 2018, at 11:40, I was drifting along the River Elbe in Hamburg, my Camera Obscura Boat gently rocking with the current and waves. The Elbphilharmonie stood before me at Sandtorhafen, its glass structure catching the midday light, reflecting like a shimmering mirage against the water.

I'd been working on my Motiongraph series with my mobilized Camera Obscura vehicles since 2014, but that day felt different—there was a quiet energy in the air, a sense of possibility, a perfect symbiosis of man and machine.

I set up my Camera Obscura, using two sheets of chromogenic paper to capture the scene directly on color paper as negatives. The result was Motiongraph #140, a pair of unique works, each measuring 127 × 204 cm. The blurred, sepia-toned images—split across two perspectives—seem to vibrate with motion, as if the Elbphilharmonie itself was swaying with the river.

Those two negatives hold more than an image—they hold the memory of an immersive morning on the Elbe, where I felt the world fade away, leaving only the rhythm of the river and the pulse of my heart.

Capsule of Time: Chasing Vincent's Spirit

On July 14, 2023, at 09:59, I found myself in Camargue, France—that magical place where land meets sea, where the light carries something ancient and alive. I had come searching for Van Gogh's trees, carrying my 8x10 Walking Camera, a setup I shoot from the belly to reach places my larger mobilized Camera Obscuras can't access.

The trees stood like ancient guardians along a quiet path, their branches weaving a tunnel of light and shadow. There was something about them—the way they bent, the way they reached toward the sky—that reminded me of Vincent's swirling, passionate brushstrokes. I could almost feel his presence there, as if his spirit had settled into the landscape itself.

With my signature 8-second exposure—always 8 seconds, my personal window to hold a moment—I captured the scene directly onto a unique chromogenic paper negative. The colors came alive in ways I hadn't fully anticipated: reds bleeding into oranges, pinks melting into purples and dark browns, creating a dreamlike tapestry that felt both surreal and deeply familiar.

This photograph became one of the first and most special pieces in my ongoing series "Looking for Van Gogh's Trees," which I started in 2023. This piece later traveled to Arles for my exhibition "Le monde flottant" at Anne Clergue Galerie, returning to the very region that inspired Van Gogh himself.