82 | 100 Out of Cam: Standing still
from the series 100 photos - 100 stories
Foto Koch is celebrating 100 years and we are telling YOUR best stories, because without you we wouldn't be here. Today's story comes from Marcell Pabis and he tells us about his photo series 'Stillgestanden' and the emotions he associates with it.
Marcell PabisA special day
It was March 27, 2020, a sunny day with pleasantly warm temperatures. The sky was blue, no clouds to be seen far and wide. The perfect weather for my kind of photography, playing with light and shadow, showing contrasts and setting everything up in the camera without post-processing.
The view from the kitchen window encouraged me to set off, I took my street setup, consisting of the Nikon Z6, the FTZ adapter and the Nikon 85mm f1.8 G. Besides architecture photography, my great passion is street photography. Capturing emotions and people in pictures, simply showing everyday life. But on this day, when I was out and about, there was a huge difference. We will all remember this difficult & exhausting time for a very long time. Caf?s closed, playgrounds closed, sports clubs closed and many other things that enriched our everyday lives came to a standstill. The difference was that everything was empty. The worst thing for a street photographer, you might think. No. The worst thing for entrepreneurs who were brought to their knees, had existential fears or families who no longer knew what to do. It was like the command: "Stand still".
Marcell PabisA ray of hope
On this day, I wanted to capture other emotions. You often look at photos and say: "Wow, that's emotional" without reading a caption, theme or text. You can interpret something of your own in every photo. My photos in this post will not be seen as emotional at first, but perhaps they will be once you have read this text. Only then will emotions and memories be awakened when you look at them again with background knowledge. Sometimes photos only tell the true story that the photographer wants to tell when we find a clue or parallels that we have witnessed in the past, in the form of a text. For this reason and the past events, I created my photo series "Standing still". I tried to find motifs that describe our everyday life well, because it is simply part of life. You should look at the photos and draw strength from them, together we can put the year with its losses, ups and downs behind us and look ahead.
