Photographers are supposed to be active on the internet nowadays. You have to have at least a tumblr, flickr, Instagram and a blog to share your work with the world and get noticed. Surprisingly, there are still few young photographers out there where you have to go outside into the “real” world to discover their breathtaking pictures.
This happened to me with Heji Shin. Even though I knew her before through the Zeit Magazine conference were she was one of the speakers, I never had the chance to take a proper look at her work. But one day I walked into an empty subway station and was intrigued by the above picture hanging there. The merge between the street culture of Berlin of the people sitting in Görlitzer Park and enjoying life and the empty Opera house of Deutsche Oper was beautiful and twisted at the same time. So many hidden messages disclosed in front of my eyes in this quiet, beautiful but at the same time haunting photograph.
Looking over the full campaign Heji Shin shot for the theatrical season 2014/15 I have to say that these images really speak to me. They tell me the story about the multitude of creative culture in Berlin. About the collective, vibrating energy making the city shift into a myriad of shapes. But even though new things happen here all the time, some old things never change. One of them is the Deutsche Oper which is still one of the best Opera Houses in Europe. Even though the photos don’t relate to a specific piece they present the people working backstage and made me curios again for the big old Opera house far away in the West of the city. Maybe you think that you’re not even that interested in Opera. But I recommend you to go there at least once in your life. Because of course it’s great to check out all the new and exciting stuff going on. But it would be dull to forget about the cultural heritage and history which made Berlin the meeting place for the creative creme de la creme of good old Europe since the Twenties until today. It makes sense to put Berlin’s raw beauty on the center stage of the Opera. Both things are connected and go hand in hand, even if people sometimes tend to forget it way to easily. After the jump the magical campaign photos showing Berlin and the Deutsche Oper from its most transparent side.
