Berlin LOVERS – Jürgen Bürgin

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Berlin Lovers - Jürgen Bürgin – Berlin, Germany

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‘Berlin Lovers’ is one of my earlier photos, it’s made in the subway station at Berlin Alexanderplatz. For me it’s somehow one of my own classic photos. Some of my photos I’ve seen too often for myself, but with this here it’s really different, I still can look at it, and somehow the scene touches me still. Maybe it’s one of my photos that explains best my understanding of photography. It has much to do with storytelling. I like to tell those untold stories that are happening every day in every place on this planet, those small little stories of love, hate, deception, sympathy, pride and so on… But I’m not telling the real stories. Although this photo isn’t staged, although the people here aren’t actors, although they are real persons that were there accidentally on the day on which I took the photo – despite all this, this is a piece of art, that is telling its own story. To be exact: Not the artwork, and neither the artist is telling the story. The artwork is only evoking innumerable different stories – in the mind of the viewer, in the fantasy of the beholder. So the viewer – and his individual perception of the artwork - is becoming an essential, or even the only relevant part of the artwork. The artwork is coming to existence in the perception of the recipient, and nowhere else. And I still like this photo for its openness, for its big variety of connotations it is evoking in me: connotations to movies and novels, connotations to my own experiences with loving someone, the connotation of a big city jungle.

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Bürgin’s Lovers are unique people in a dull environment. Dark green edited image creates a Metropolis’ setting that steers the focus on people instead of the surrounding architecture (beside the artificial, Alexanderplatz train station is to be seen, as many others along U-bahn). The photographer catches that very single moment capable of stimulating a wide range of emotions in the viewer. What are those lovers talking about?