Wolfgang Lonien

Du Pham has a nice essay which she calls a declaration of love to her bicycle (in German, in case you understand that). In it, she describes the happiness she feels on her daily commute of 3 kilometers, or the visiting of her mum’s, which are 72 km – that’s more than your average Joe would cycle, so brava to her! I also love my (non-electrical) steel bike, and I should use it more often indeed.

In the same medium, Alke Wierth writes about walking, and about her difficulties of doing it. She thinks that the metaphorical meaning of someone “being gone”, either physically or mentally, might influence her and be the cause of it, but is also mentioning that she’s a smoker. I was, too, until August of 2017, and according to my doc that was the main reason of developing an atherosclerosis, my known cause of pain while walking. I didn’t have an operation, but early last year started to count my steps with one of these little fitness trackers, and I don’t want to brag about it, but that little thing does keep me motivated – and I take the time to walk, and so to care a bit of myself.

While I was still working, I used to walk with a colleague during our lunch breaks, until I became a really much slower walker than him, so I was always asking for a cigarette break, or for a short stop to take a photograph – signs of developing pAVK, or as we call it in German, “Schaufensterkrankheit”. You ask for breaks to window-shop, so to say.

A propos photographing: Mike Johnston has a nice article featuring Paloma Dooley who is photographing landscapes in and around L.A. using an 8 by 10 inch film camera. That is not a camera which you could carry around for excuses, and 50 dollars per “shot” also means that you wouldn’t take as many – she says that sometimes she takes two photographs in a month. But it’s still a nice article and video about her, and it also pays to look at her web page. I would love to see one of her contact prints, but at 100$ each, couldn’t afford it.

As always, thanks for reading.