Project „OBSCURA 121 VIEWS“ was succesfully finished. Opening ceremony and exhibition of some of the artworks took place on January 31st in Berlin.

At that time I was studying in Stuttgart and my stay was about to end, so I decided to visit Berlin in order to meet new people. Even a friend of mine, Peťa, came from Slovakia (Thank you!)

On Friday evening we came  to Gallery Pflüger quite early. As the Germans would say, we were “überpünktlich”, so we walked around the gallery almost alone. As the time flew by, the place got crowded and there was little room to move. We met few other photographers, whose pictures were also at the exhibition. It was a real pleasure to talk with other pinhole photographers out there. You know, everyone has their own lives, own bussineses but there in Berlin we were all crazy about pinhole photography. I have never heard words like pinhole or camera obscura uttered by so many people in one place before. Usually, I am the one, who is repeating them over and over again and my friends must sometimes think that I am insane. Now, at least Petra saw, that there are more similarly pinhole-obsessed people in the world.

We were not so ”überpünktlich” on Saturday morning when coming to the little walk in Kreuzberg. Little things like celebrating the book opening in really nice bar with berlin-style room and then few other unpredictable and spontaneous decisions which led us into one of the best clubs in Berlin (according to quick internet research afterwards), caused our delay. Luckilly, other pinholers waited for us and together we enjoyed the beautiful sunny weather by walking, talking, taking pictures and having a good time.  Alex even made interviews for his podcast (Listen here).

I would like to say a big THANK YOU to the whole OBSCURA team (Larissa, Mila, Eli, Nadine, Fine) for these beautiful days in Berlin, for a book which one must love to browse – an amazing project that took 2 years to prepare. Big THANK YOU goes also to all the participants, pinholers and fans of pinhole photography who made my stay in Berlin unforgettable.

As always, it is about the people you meet and get to know. It is something totally different reading an article on web by someone called „Old Penfold“ and knowing, that this Old Penfold is a cool guy Alex from UK, you were talking with in Berlin.

Here you can check out work of the photographers I met in Berlin:

Succubus: http://www.succubus.es/
Markus Kaesler : http://www.markuskaesler.de/
Alex Yates : http://www.alexyates-photography.com/
James Cathcart: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10140681@N08/
Jos van Roij: http://www.slowimages.com
Larissa Honsek: http://novemberkind-fotografie.tumblr.com/

You can buy the book here : http://www.obscura-book.com/ or via Amazon.

One of the things I like about this book is that among cities like Tokyo, Paris or New York, there is also a small village Voznica, where I come from.

And in the end, just link to an article written by Alex with his thoughts and pictures: http://pinholista.com/obscura-book-vernissage/

edited by Lýdia Pajerská