City Explo[it | r]ation – Märzfeld train station

On Thursday I met with Sugar Ray Banister (see his post here) again to explore the old Märzfeld train station which has a dark history (see here for the German wikipedia entry – I could not find an appropriate english site). The train station was renamed to Nürnberg-Langwasser in 1957 and has not been in use since 26. September 1987 (except for shunting and storage). We had hoped to find more “history” here but probably due to use as a regular train station after WWII until 1987 all traces of its past had been erased.

City Explo[it | r]ation – Old city of Nürnberg

After all the bashing in the last few posts about Nürnberg, we take a small break today and I will take you to the old city of Nürnberg (well mostly my coffee places there) which is actually interesting, beautiful, and you can easily burn a whole afternoon just by hanging around – as I am doing right now while writing this.

City Explo[it | r]ation – Beverly Nürnberg

Last week I met with Sugar Ray Banister to explore the Maxfeld area. On Thursday, we went for another walk to the posher areas of Nürnberg – Beverly Nürnberg if you want. We mainly walked around Nürnberg Erlenstegen — Sugar Ray Banister’s shots can be found here. The area of interest is depicted below, above the marker.

Featured Photographer – Sugar Ray Banister

I came across Sugar Ray Banister a couple of months ago when it was clear that I will be moving to the US and I decided that I wanted to do a city portrait of Nürnberg before I leave. After all, I have been living in this city for more than 2 years now and did not have the slightest idea what the city was really like except for the older part of the town. I was browsing the web for some photography that depicted Nürnberg in a more natural, unaltered way. This is when I found Sugar Ray Banister’s blog and photography. I was immediately hooked to the intricate mix of photos and text putting them into the context and history of the city. After having met with him for some shooting I asked him whether he would be willing to be interviewed. He agreed and so he is the first one in a (hopefully long) series of interviews with unique photographers.

City Explo[it | r]ation – Nürnberg Maxfeld

Last week I met with Sugar Ray Banister to do some city exploration in Nürnberg as part of my documentation project before I leave Nürnberg for good (clock is tickin’) – stay tuned for a separate feature on Sugar Ray Banister and his work. The main aim was to document the before and after of gentrification in the Maxfeld area in Nürnberg. In particular, Nürnberg is very much concerned about its image as a nice and beautiful city with its castle as one of the central cornerstone in its presentation. But in the end, the city is ugly – not because of the places that one might consider ugly but because of these half-hearted tries to “fix” it and make it a better place. So we browsed through the Maxfeld area and found some pretty amazing sights.

Here are some shots from our exploration discovering and depicting the contrasts and conflicts in Maxfeld (and Nürnberg in general). At this point in time this transition is creating a very dynamic and vivid tension. What you will realize is that in almost all shots you will find satellite dishes. This is mainly because the whole area is full with those ones.