Berlin: Imagining the Tri Chord: Imaganing The Tri Chord - Tapa dura

These evocative images document the ever-changing face of Berlin and its people. The title of the book is Nicholas Sinclair’s adaptation of the musical term ‘tritone’: the musical intervention that creates a sense of tension and suspense, a mood that is evident in the colour combinations of these haunting photographs. Split into six different themes – the Spirit, Melancholia, Conflict, Desire, Anarchy, and Political Control – these photographs form a fascinating record of East Berlin’s vibrant, passionate and scarred landscape. Sinclair’s painterly eye searches out marks and images left by the city’s anonymous inhabitants. Working like an archaeologist recovering a collective artwork, he uncovers the rich layering of history that is apparent in cracked and peeling paint on the walls and surfaces of the city. When these patterns are echoed in the blemishes on the skin of a young Asian girl from Berlin, the connection sets up an indelible resonance between the city’s fabric, its inhabitants and its history. It is this connection between individual and collective life that takes visible shape in these arresting and poetic images.