Stuttgart City Library
The Stuttgart City Library is probably one of the most photographed libraries in Germany. During my visit to this building, approximately 30% of the people were walking around with cameras and smartphones instead of books, looking for the best selfie spot. As a great lover of libraries and architecture, this circumstance is not discouraging. I saw it as a challenge to capture this famous building designed by architect Eun Young Yi with my own photographic style.
A black and white conversion is rarely used in my work. However, with the monochrome facade of the library, I don't feel that the missing color detracts from the image. On the contrary, in this shot, the entire focus is on the stark contrast between black and white. The glaring midday sun wonderfully accentuates the angularity of the cube and focuses on the repetitive squares that are distributed in different sizes across the walls of the building.
During my research on the building, I came across almost exclusively pictures of the large reading room and was quite surprised when, immediately after the compact entrance, I found myself in an entrance hall that extends over four floors. Here, too, the cuboids, unobtrusive yet unmissable, set the tone. It is a reverent space that makes the unmistakable power of knowledge palpable.
The most popular perspective of the Stuttgart City Library is this central perspective of the large reading room with its beautiful staircases. After having seen this motif in all conceivable lighting moods and edits, I ask myself the question of reinterpretation. While I was setting up the camera and tripod, I noticed the spots of sunlight that create a multitude of rectangular reflections on the surfaces of the room. I like to use such lighting moods in my time-lapse videos, as they can be set in motion with a specific recording technique. So, the photo was quickly turned into an ultra-high-resolution 8K video, in which light and visitors breathe life into the otherwise still room.
With my now awakened photographic playfulness, I am looking for further possibilities to show this room from a new perspective. A look up into the room reminds me of the majestic church domes that I like to photograph vertically upwards. To achieve this shooting angle, there was only one challenge: to stand in the middle of the room, I have to stand on the glass skylight of the entrance hall. A short consultation with the caretaker of the city library finds a solution. In no time at all, we place a ladder over the glass window onto the stone pedestals. With my camera and a tripod, I slowly crawl forward and lie backwards on the ladder. With the tripod above me, I swing the camera with a wide-angle 15mm shift lens 360° around its own axis and photograph eight individual photos in order to later create a panorama from them.
The image processing is also no easy task with this picture. Due to the extremely large angle of view, distortions occur, which are not automatically corrected when the images are assembled. So, I manually aligned the railing bars and retouched out the people who moved through the picture during the shooting. This photo, which at first glance seems very simple, was the most challenging picture of the year, but also worth the effort.
A very lively picture concludes this photo series. The Stuttgart City Library is a vibrant place of knowledge transfer and attracts a large number of visitors not only because of its architecture, but of course primarily because of its multitude of books. The search for new knowledge is intended to visualize this motif.
