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A contribution by Anna Weingärtner for the project “What’s going on there?!” by students at h_da
It's a summery May morning. Darmstadt's streets are quiet, the air still slightly cool from the night. Sunbeams pierce the fresh green treetops, casting shadows on the old building facades of the Johannesviertel district. Many side streets branch off from Frankfurter Straße. Blooming front gardens and ornate balconies line the streets. A few pedestrians and cyclists are about. No one is in a hurry. In the middle of the sidewalk, a tall man has stretched out to his full length, taking a picture with his cell phone of a dandelion growing in a right-angled arc from a wall.
“I was once told in a workshop: If you don’t have dirty clothes at the end of a photo tour, you haven’t tried hard enough,” says Peter Albert, brushing the street grime off his T-shirt. The amateur photographer is a trained meteorologist and has lived in Darmstadt since 2019. During the COVID-19 lockdown, he came up with a project: “Photo Walks through Darmstadt’s Districts.” The name says it all. Darmstadt is divided into nine boroughs with a total of 37 districts . Since December 2020, Peter has made it his mission to explore these districts photographically – whenever he has the time. To help him, he created a detailed map on Google Maps so he can track where each district ends while he’s out and about.
A practical camera
Over the past four and a half years, the 54-year-old has walked through 36 of the 37 districts, taking numerous photographs. For this project, however, he doesn't use a professional camera, but rather his Google Pixel phone. According to Peter, there are good reasons for using his phone as a camera: "Because it's always with me, easy to use, and because it's very easy to reach even hidden corners." He accepts that some photos won't turn out well or are blurry, as they are, after all, "snapshots." Peter only spent one day in each district taking photos, not several. After each tour, he edits the pictures and posts them on his Instagram account .
Today, the last district is up for the photo project. The Johannesviertel, located northwest of the city center, is also Peter's neighborhood. The photo tour starts at 9 a.m. because, as Peter explains, "The light is better in the morning or evening." He climbs onto a wall and photographs the shadow cast by a streetlamp.
An eye for detail
“I don’t change anything about the scene I find; I photograph what’s there. I want to perceive and make visible the details, textures, lines, and perspectives that would otherwise go unnoticed.” Peter says that the Darmstadt project is what truly helped him develop his photographic style—and, of course, get to know Darmstadt better.
On the street by “Timm’s Café,” he kneels down in front of an old Mercedes-Benz to take a close-up of the tire. The car’s owner happens to be there and strikes up a conversation. He’s pleased that his car is being noticed. According to Peter, such moments are rather rare. His pictures don’t feature people, and he hasn’t experienced many human encounters or stories in general. Peter prefers to be alone on his tours of the city’s districts, letting the atmosphere work its magic on him. “I like little things, decay, and even ugly things. As soon as I see something that stands out from the ordinary, I spontaneously take a photo.”
Discovery tour
Not everyone understands the artistic aspect of his photography. During his tour in Wixhausen-East, Peter once photographed an old doorbell sign. "An aggressive neighbor almost called the police because she thought I was spying on my next robbery." Even though Wixhausen might sound off-putting to many because of its name, Peter is enthusiastic, especially since, according to the "Darmstadt City Lexicon," it's home to "the oldest of the preserved medieval structures in the city": a church tower dating back to 1150.
Peter's spontaneous insider tips include the Pallaswiesen and Morneweg districts, Schepp-Allee with its crooked trees in the publishers' quarter, Lincoln-Wall with its graffiti street art, and Wenckstraße in the Martinsviertel, where he would most like to live. However, no single district particularly stood out for Peter during his photography project. “There is something to discover everywhere,” says the 54-year-old, who looks at open courtyards, photographs through wine bottles, notices reflections in windows, or takes a close-up of the paint layers of a graffiti.
"Darmstadt's beauty lies in its hidden corners." For Peter, the various architectural structures represent specific historical periods and their construction styles, such as the Luisencenter from the 1970s, which, in his opinion, is beautiful in its own way. "There is a beauty in things that appear ugly on the surface," because, according to Peter, these often tell a story.
End and Beginning: How does it feel to let go of such a long-term project? "It's not like I'm ending the project and falling into a funk. Now I can actually do something with it. It's a good feeling to know I can continue," says the amateur photographer. Peter wants to go to a "Gallery and Get-Together" at the "Kunstzentrale Darmstadt" (Darmstadt Art Center) and promote it directly with some photos from his project. A traveling exhibition, a memory game, a book – many ideas are now bubbling up in his head.
Back in his stairwell, Peter still feels a little wistful that the four-and-a-half-year-old project is now coming to an end. In his guest bathroom, instead of a mirror, many small square pictures from his "Photo Walks through Darmstadt's Districts" project hang on the wall. Darmstadt in small photo squares: "Only when viewed as a whole do the Darmstadt photos appear so colorful and diverse," says Peter, looking at his work.
All photos and featured image: Anna Weingärtner
This article was created as part of the "Was da los" project – a student-run newsroom run by students of the Online Journalism program at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (h_da). DA.news supports the project and publishes selected articles on its platform. Further information and articles can be found here and at: www.was-da-los.de
