Over the last few years I lived in many different locations and used different computer equipment, not acknowledging the crucial need for backing up data. My photographic repository was messy. It involved random USB hard drives, SSDs, a desktop computer and a few laptops I changed every two years. At some point, I went back to analogue photography which required digitising the negatives. It only added to the overall hullabaloo of my photo catalogue. At least two times I was close to losing large parts of it. Some time ago, I decided to do something about it and experimented with… Read more: The Much Needed Plight of Backing Up Your Photos

Exploring medium format analog photography can bring a lot of joy, especially if you need a breathe of It was the unusually dark winter of 2023/2024 when I felt something was lacking in my everyday photographic experience. I was under the impression I was taking too many digital photos. They were too sterile, too technically perfect for me not only to enjoy the end result but, most of all, to indulge in the process. I made efforts to creatively use my 35mm cameras, predominantly the still excellent Contax 139 Quartz, but it brought me little joy. Contax was wonderful for… Read more: The Difficult Yet Rewarding Love for My Pentacon Six

Over the last months, I have been revising the manuscript of my book on memory politics in post-Soviet Kaliningrad Oblast. While looking at spatial changes in post-1946 Kaliningrad city, which was called Königsberg before that, my eyes turned to Ponarth, the city’s southern suburbs, spared from destruction. As it often happens, I re-scanned the negatives and reflected upon them instead of pushing the manuscript forward in a more direct way. It is a story of an urban Atlantis in former East Prussia which, although damaged and transformed, continues to live in a sea of growing hatred towards alternative, non-state-sanctioned views… Read more: Revisiting Ponarth 2: Time Reveals More Tensions

Shortly after the second wave of COVID-19 hit Russia, I went to Ponarth to learn more about one of the two parts of old Königsberg that survived the Second World War. The less is left of the spirit of Ponarth, the more tensions over Kaliningrad’s past bocomes visible. This is a revised version of the story I published on 35mmc.com in June 2021. I want to remind it because of some other thoughts on Ponarth I intend to share soon. I took all photos featured in this story. Ponarth, contrary to Amalienau/Hufen, was not held in high esteem. There were… Read more: Revisiting Ponarth 1: Oppressive Memory Politics in Russia’s Westernmost Region

It is a story of how reigniting the flame of shooting film made me appreciate the late 1970s West German and Japanese design wonder. It is so compact and sleek that no matter what I need to bring to frequent research and teaching trips, there will always be space for my Contax 139 Quartz. I took all photos featured in this story. Check my webpage for more content. You can also buy me film to keep my work going. I recently revisited and revised my story on Kaliningrad’s Ponarth district, which I had explored back in 2020 when I had… Read more: How I (Un)Willingly Discovered My Go-to Travel Film Camera

Back in 2022, I was still at the beginning of my work with U.S. students coming to Denmark. When a colleague of mine at DIS Study Abroad suggested I could accompany her and her summer class to Marseille, I did not hesitate for a second. I immediately sensed this study tour would bring opportunities to add new items to my teaching toolbox and experience a place which history is relevant on both sides of the Northern Atlantic. Naturally, none of this could happen without the analogue angle. It was a summer course my colleague designed to be special in many… Read more: Two Flairs of Marseille and a Film Camera

How shooting film with old-school gear can help provide better guidance through the labyrinth of European nation-states’ difficult past and their still challenging present. Co-written with Hannah Wines, a former student of Miłosz. Hannah: I did not expect analogue photography to be a defining component of my semester studying European Union politics. Yet, looking through the rolls of film that my core course took together, there are three photos that sum up the Fall of 2022. The first, taken in a classroom in Copenhagen, is from the first day of Core Course Week. It was taken by another student in… Read more: Stop to Snap the Roses: a Political Science Semester through Analogue Photography