Hannelore Whitley is german though she speaks perfect english with an american accent. I met her on Gropius Stadt on a windy morning when I was trying to locate an enormous delirious urban and social housing development by Walter Gropius. I had been wondering the area for two days not knowing exactly how to start, what to look for and where was the site I was looking for. I´d just had a worrying phone call that shocked me so I could not gather my thoughts properly. I kept on wondering and asking people if they knew of a big crescent shape housing state designed by the famous architect. But very few understood english and those who did knew nothing of what I was after. So they kept on sending me back to the ugly shopping center which is also known as Gropius Stadt. It turned out that by this name is known an entire area of a disproportionate scale with gardens like forests and very dark pathways that lead to bare open greenland. Luckily a turkish woman pointed out the right direction and finally by the indications of a man that with a great emphasis equal to his sympathy- he spoke no english - explained to me in a very emphatic way that everything was Gropius Stadt and that the crescent I was looking for - I had made a drawing on the soil- it was just 500 meters away from us.
Hannelore appeared before me and I asked her if she spoke english. She nodded and confirmed that this was the building that I was looking for. Kindly she said good bye and left.
About two hours later as I was back on my foot steps towards the U-bahn we crossed again and she stopped to ask me if I had taken photographs. We began to talk and in a very natural way she began to talk to me about her life. She said to me that my english was better than hers because there has been years since she last spoke the language. She had been born in Berlin around 1934 but at the age of 13 just at the end of the war her family left to live in the Unites Sates. There she married her late husband, an army man of irish origin, a Lieutenant Colonel who was killed in the Vietnam War. She never married again and as they didn´t have any children, she decided to return to Berlin. She has been living in Gropius Stadt for 30 years now. She thought Gropius was an american and explained to her that he was German, very famous architect that had been the founder of the even more famous Bauhaus School in Dessau but he was exiled in the United Estates when the nazis came to power. She conceded.
Why are you taking these pictures she asked me. And I tried to explain that I was hoping to gather some images for a project, a personal work that I am trying to do. I explained to her that I was a photographer and that it was also my passion and hobby to travel to places and my interest was to photograph where ordinary people live. I then asked her to take her portrait promising that I would send it to her.
Do you have an email, have you access to the internet I asked. -No she said, I don´t need that.
Have you got any family of friends whom I can send the photograph to, I asked. -No se replied calmly. My two brothers died..... -
Do you have an email, have you access to the internet I asked. -No she said, I don´t need that.
Have you got any family of friends whom I can send the photograph to, I asked. -No se replied calmly. My two brothers died..... -
You are alone I enquired.
-Yes, she said.
-Yes, she said.
To begin with she was reluctant with the idea of me taking her portrait but finally agreed . As she was posing for me trying to get the West Highland Terrier to sit properly ( he is deaf she informed me ) she said: -Had I known that you would be here today wanting to take my portrait, I would have gone to see my hairdresser.
I smiled at her with gratitude as I took this picture and I promised that in my next visit to Berlin I will come to have coffee and a chat with her.
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