Thomas Birke's photostream

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I am fascinated by life in metropolitan areas, surrounded by millions of other people.

My Vision is to create a preview of our life in the future. Is it possible to efficiently and happily live together in a confined space for a large number of people? I say yes. I assume there are 2 ways of doing this – the right way and the wrong one. Carefully planned High Rise Apartment buildings versus makeshift slums. Hong Kong versus Mexico City.
I am most interested in density. My aspiration is to show at least a 1000 people or their traces on every picture. Be it the illuminated windows of their apartments, the light streaks of their vehicles or their clothes hung out of windows for drying. Even if you do not see people directly, you can see their footprint on the urban environment. An organism that is alive and breathing.
One shall print the pictures in a 2x3 metre scale and be able to find another story on every square centimetre. The images should provoke interest on first sight, through colour, shape and proportions. But even if you examine them more intensively, you should never be bored.
I am looking for the city from Blade Runner. One should be able to experience the images as if they were from one huge metropolis.

How can you do this on the web without putting up high rez files of the images to scroll through AND prevent people from misusing this opportunity to do their own prints? It's simple, you can't. There are only three things: 1.)pursue every misuse with vigilance 2.)convince people, that there is even greater detail in the pictures on my hard disk or in the prints I sell 3.)have good faith in people that they appreciate my dedication and hard work...

I am also kind of an information junkie, I love stock tickers, news tickers, and every other kind of seemlessly useless information.

That's the reason why I try to tag and geo tag my pictures as precisely as possible.

I want to photograph people, people in urban environments, and cities in the night.

I want to show how cities are growing and maturing and develop a live on their own throug the people living within but expressed without people neccesarily to be seen on the photographs.

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my website
www.birke.net

my blog
www.thomasbirke.com
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I do Large Format Photography, currently on a Sinar P2 8x10.