What (hidden) places to visit in Berlin

 

Berlin is a known city for its history and lifestyle, but lately there are many people interested in: its entrepreneur spirit, its vision of future and its projection to the world as an international major city. Due to the history that carries behind, Berlin has had to overcome very fast hard poundings with great mastery. After two World Wars, the Third Reich, the Cold War or the Berlin Wall, the city is today a reference in Europe, surpassing the most ancient power. However, they can’t still forget large centenary traditions or delete some bitter marks. Berlin combines new glazing skyscrapers with old beer wooden taverns and monuments and spaces that testimony the past. It doesn’t forget and it won’t.

Maybe that’s the main motive whereby it’s turned into the favourite destination for young people, adults, couples and group of friends. The city awaits different spots for everyone and it’s full of contradictions presented as a super attractive trip and full of fascinating experiences.  As always, when we talk about a capital, we want to suggest some uncommon places such as the Holocaust Tower or the Check Point Charlie. Even the Schloss Charlottenburg palace or the Brandenburg Tor doesn’t need presentation. We’re convinced that there will be some parts that surely you’re going to visit. We’re recommending a few spots out of the touristy guides that are essential to become an authentic Berliner for some days.

1. What places to visit in Berlin: Anna Blume

‘Anna Blume’ is the name of a Kart Schwitter’s poem and since 2005 it names a very special café. It’s a very romantic atmosphere because it also counts with a florist that fusion the smell of the flowers with the sweet from the cakes and the coffee. In fact, they use some eatable flowers to introduce them in their wide range tea menu. All the sweets, cakes and ice creams are craft and you can enjoy delicious specialties such as feta cheese with avocado crème, natural drinks… It has benches and marble tables surrounded with Art Noveau details. It also counts with a wonderful terrace where you can sit and read under a Sicomoro centenary tree.

 

2. What places to visit in Berlin: Dead Chiken Alley

Dead Chicken Alley is the street art scenery. In the few years, Berlin’s turned into the reference of new cultural movements placed mainly in the Mitte. We can find this famous alley at the Rosenthaler Strasse, showing the richness of an alternative aesthetic. Dead Chicken Alley emerges after the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond the street art, it is important for the symbolic meaning that has behind. Before of the falling of the Wall it was forbidden to paint in these walls, so the fever for the wanted liberty carried new cultural groups waiting anxious to break the rules.

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Images by hanway.es

3. What places to visit in Berlin: Helmut Newton Foundation

Fashion addicts, you can’t miss out a visit to the Helmut Newton Foundation. At the Photography Museum you’ll find the Permanent Loan exposition: 200 pictures from the thousand original photos that Helmut Newton donated to the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage before dying. A rout that shows the undisputed talent from the fashion photographer that knew how to shoot the sensuality better than anyone. Naked, portrait and fashion are the three main themes from the author, and captured the personality of big movie stars and the whole jet set, from Sofia Loren to Carla Bruni.

  

4. What places to visit in Berlin: Einstein Stammhaus

A stop that is a must to enjoy a real Berliner local is the Einstein Stammhaus, a literary bistro where you can taste the authentic Germanic food. Its specialty is the aplfelstrudel served with vanilla sauce, one of the best apple cakes from the city and one of the typical recipes from the country. The elegant decoration and the attitude from the waiters reminds the glorious days from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

 

 

London shows the exhibition “Vogue 100: A Century of Style”

Foto

This year, British Vogue celebrates the centenary of magazine and for this cause, it has been installed an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London and you can visit it until the 22 may. Fortunate, London’people and everybody that want to escape to the city of streetstyle for excellence. “Vogue 100: A Century of Style” is the name that receives exhibition with the most iconics of photographs that have taken part of the publication during ten decades.

Several rooms of the museum encompass the work and show as the magazine has been the mirror and the testimony of the political and social changes of the British society and of course, the evolution of fashion. Pursuing always the quality a shopistication, British Vogue has contributed to define a fashion journalism and communication as a process linked to the art and culture that has implications beyond the purely aesthetic.

  
Source: i-d.vice.com

The exhibition is divided into different decades and which is accessed as a tunnel of time: from the latest photographs, oneself jut out in the past until 1916. The intention is that the visitor has the sensation to be through the pages of a special edition in which past and present are mixed. En white and black pictures, illustrations, paintings or photography of Alexander McQueen which occupies a whole wall, all these represent the mentality changes, the beauty concept, the technological advances and in the design …

Vogue is not only fashion or that wear. For his drafting have gone photographers as Irvin Penn or Lord Snowdon and more than the celebrities of recent years, as Patrick Demarchelier and Mario Testino. These revolutionary the world of fashion photography to leave a simple catalogue any elevate to category work of art. A art with to explore and exploit the infinity opportunities and that today has become an instrument of a key inspire designers, stylists and industry professionals. Actually,the fashion photograpy is what most distinguishes the magazines.

 
Source: i-d.vice.com

The austerity of post-war 50s, the social realism 60s, images increasingly fantastic… A Century of Style is more than fashion, is the story of a century, various facts, changes and personalities and the way to create and produce images.

Richard Avedon: the photographer of the twentieth century

Today we put aside the world of female icons to talk about one of the most important person on the world of fashion and photography: Richard Avedon. Not only women have written the story of fashion, and everybody knows it. In fact, there are a lot of designers, portrait and male artists who have contributed in this creative and famous universe.

Richard Avedon

Avedon (1923-2004) was born in New York and he started making clothes when he was a child: his father had a clothing store on Five Avenue and his mother’s family owned to a textile manufacturing  company. When he was young went to the University of Columbia for a while but left to join the merchant marine US in 1942. Just before he undertook the adventure, his father gave him a camera Rolleiflex, his first instrument to start a job as a portraitist. And the end of 1940s, the important Harper’s Bazaar magazine claimed his services. He was working two decades for the american magazine until 1966, when he became the photographer of Vogue USA.

Trying to define the work of Avedon is the same as speaking of current fashion photography. On the beginng, the photography  was a way of communicating fashion, but his way of portraying was so revealing that changed the landscape and influence the creation of new collections. The “Avedon revolution” began thanks to a trip to Paris, city that inspired him to improve the fashion of the city to a new context with international projection.

  

He gradually began to develop an innovative, elegant and classic style but with a different point of view. The first innovation was photographing something prepared and planned but in a “emotional” scenario: to mix the street photography and the fashion photography. Something that now no longer surprise us, but it was the photograph Avedon who claimed to transmit something beyond the purely commercial value.

Thanks to an elegant but eccentric and edgy props, he brought the world of fashion theater and art and detached  the same and boring catalog photograph. Additionally, he turned these models in protagonists of these scenarios. He gave them a personality that this personality had to be portrayed in the picture.

One could also say that he was one of the fathers of minimalism. In his magnificent facet as a portraitist chose for an apparent simplicity that came marked by a new white background. However they weren’t simply portraits, Avedon proposed a strongly psychological result. He organized  long sessions with conversations up to four hours until the characters left aside tension and he could captured their features more unexpected. In front of his eyes passed these personalities: Truman Capote, Henry Miller, Humphrey Bogart or Marilyn Monroe.

  

The photographer not only dedicated and revolutionized the fashion. His portraits pursued a line human: to capture the simplicity and transparency, signals that indicated the experiences and inner psychology of the characters.

In 1979, parallel to his career in the world of magazines, he undertook one of his jobs most famous and important. The museum Amon Carter of Texas contracte him for a project (In the american west), he dedicated it five years to traveled of the western United States.

The goal was to document to people who never would write the history of his country: Farmers, miners, homeless, housewives … all in large-format photographs, daylight and outdoors.

 

Richard Avedon became part of the history as one of the most important photographers of the century XX. Someone changed the schemes and defined our image of beauty, elegance and culture. He has captured the most important moments and features of the century and he has also given voice to many people without fame or name, with: photographs of the civil rights movement of the southern United States, from protesters against the Vietnam War or the fall of the Berlin Wall. They are a great heritage for society.

Hidden art galleries and libraries in Barcelona

We like coffee for its flavour, its revitalizing aroma, how warm it makes our hands in the cold winter mornings… but there is something else. Coffee is also that moment when you meet your friends after a long day or you stop to forget about the world with your favourite book or magazine. It might be the caffeine, that activates us, but there is something undeniable and it is the fact that there is something inherently inspiring in it, that encourages us to carry on with our activities, make new plans and absorb everything we like. Barcelona knows it and that has lately brought about some small and magical places that keep this culture alive. We are talking about the coffee shop and galleries where emerging artists showcase their work and the audience is surrounded by their concepts while they enjoy a peaceful moment. This is our selection of the best art galleries and coffee shops in Barcelona:

1. Art galleries hidden in coffee shops in Barcelona: Artte

It isn’t only their breakfasts, with delicious natural juices, chocolate or homemade pastries which attract their clients; Artte is also an artistic-gastronomic space that aims to be a platform for the exhibition, diffusion and support of artistic and cultural projects. It is 400m2 and it has an amazing and natural light that brings peace and inspires creativity. The best thing about this place is that you will be surprised every time you go back: paintings, live music, poetry… Gastronomy and culture are mixed for you to discover new things. (C/ Muntaner 83)

2. Art galleries hidden in coffee shops in Barcelona: Cosmo

It is a very modern place inspired in a minimalist decoration, colourful and vintage at the same time which perfectly expresses the character of its gallery: itinerant and avant-garde. The owners have achieved a very personal style through the use of leather sofas and varied colours, original printed stools and hanging lamps in different shades. It all alternates with paintings and illustrations that find a more prominent spot in the rear gallery. Don’t forget to try their natural shakes or the carrot cake, presented with great care and exquisite taste. (C/ d’Enric Granados, 3)

  

3. Art galleries hidden in coffee shops in Barcelona: Akashi Gallery

It isn’t strictly speaking a cafeteria but it is the best option for sushi lovers. Akashi is a space created by the photographers Tina Bagué and Toru Morimoto. Both travelled 42.000 km around Japan to complete “The Japan Photo Project”. It was during their journey that they had the idea to start up a small Japanese restaurant combined with a photographic gallery. Akashi is a meeting between art and Japanese culture, deeper than sushi. You can buy typical products from Japan and sit on authentic tatami. (C/ Rosselló, 197)

4. Art galleries hidden in coffee shops in Barcelona: The BlueProject Café

Javier Medvedovsky and Vanessa Salvi decided to get together to create The BlueProject Café, a foundation that combines art, workshops for creative youngsters and healthy eating. Besides a slowfood proposal and biologic and ecologic products, The BlueProject Café hides a collection of works of big artists such as Andy Warhol or Mark Tansey. Their aim is to attract the audience with renowned artists and mix their works with the talent of the new generations. (c/ de la Princesa 57)

Sala Project El Café

5. Art galleries hidden in coffee shops in Barcelona: Babèlia Books & Coffee

There are also cafés for book lovers. Babèlia is a café specialized in multilingual narrative that aspires to be an open space both for national and foreign culture and promote the communication between the two. It is also an exhibition room and hosts recitals, workshops and (how couldn’t they?) tasting sessions. Teas, wines and coffees go alongside original and international pastries. (C/ Villarroel 27)