"Berlin - Portrait einer Stadt" ist ein sehr beeindruckender Bildband über die deutsche Hauptstadt. Der Band dokumentiert ca. 150 Jahre Geschichte und Leben in der Stadt aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln und mit ganz unterschiedlichen Inhalten.
In jedes Kapitel führt ein Text ein, der, wie auch die anderen Texte, dreisprachig (deutsch, englisch und französisch) abgedruckt ist. Zu jedem Foto gibt es eine kurze Erläuterung mit Jahresangabe der Entstehung.
Zahlreiche Zitate wie z.B. von Thomas Mann zu dem jeweiligen dargestellten Thema unterstützen und ergänzen die Fotografien.
Besonders eindrucksvoll erscheinen die ganz- bzw. auch doppelseitigen Fotos, die den Betrachter in ihren Bann locken und ihm das Gefühl geben, dabei (gewesen) zu sein.
Ein ausgesprochen grandioses Stück Zeitgeschichte in beeindruckendem Umfang!
Carmen Kellmann für lbib.de

The spirit of Berlin
A photographic journey into the city's history
Berlin has survived two world wars, was divided by a wall during the Cold War, and after the fall of the Wall was re-united. The city emerged as a center of European power and culture. From 1860 to the present day, this book presents the story of Berlin in photographs, portraits, maps, and aerial views. With nearly 700 pages of emotional, atmospheric images, from giddy pictures of the Roaring Twenties to devastating images of war to heartwarming postwar photos of a city picking up the pieces—the Reichstag in ruins and later wrapped by Christo and Jeanne-Claude—this is the most comprehensive photographic study on Berlin ever made. More than a tribute to the city and its civic, social, and photographic history, this book especially pays homage to Berlin’s inhabitants: full of hope and strength, in their faces is reflected Berlin’s undying soul.
• Including images by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helmut Newton, René Burri, Robert Capa, Thomas Struth, and Wolfgang Tillmans as well as well-known Berlin photo-chroniclers such as Friedrich Seidenstücker, Erich Salomon, Willy Römer, and Heinrich Zille.
• Quotations from Berliners and Berlin connoisseurs such as Vladimir Nabokov, Alfred Döblin, Herwarth Walden, Marlene Dietrich, Billy Wilder, Max Schmeling, Willy Brandt, Helmut Newton, Simon Rattle, and David Bowie.
Also included: an index of photographers’ biographies.
About the author:
Hans Christian Adam studied psychology, art history and communication studies in Göttingen and Vienna. As a specialist in historical pictorial material, he has published numerous articles and books, including titles on travel and war photography. He is the author of TASCHEN’s Edward Sheriff Curtis: The North American Indian, Karl Blossfeldt, Eugène Atget: Paris and Berlin.

"But the book which got me hankering to visit Berlin this year is essentially a photography book: Berlin: Portrait of a City, just published by Taschen, a company renowned for producing excellent books. Even by its standards, Berlin, edited by Hans Christian Adam, is outstanding, packed with photographs chronicling life (and of course, sometimes death) in this extraordinary city for the last hundred years, backed up with essays and quotations from sometime Berlin residents like David Bowie and Jeffrey Eugenides."
The Times, London, United Kingdom

Inhaltsverzeichnis