Well I guess all you can do is bandage your heart and wait for it to heal. But why is this experience so painful? Why was my heart ripped apart? What can the other person give me that I don’t have myself?

Would I have had the same experience had I fully excepted and loved myself? Is there anybody in the world that could reject such a human being and if it would happen would that person be hurt?

Maybe our lovers are just a stand-ins for our parents. Are we trying to get the love from them that we never received as a child and when it is denied to us all this old frustration and and years of hurt erupt. We feel like our heart is ripped out of our chest, pierced on a stick and in disbelief we ask over and over again “why don’t you love me?” and never get an answer.

What do you think?
 
 
 
 
 
 

“My Heart (Part 2)” Williamsburg/Pig Heart stabbed and held together by rubber bands 01-24-12 at 05:48 PM

Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com

I learned a lot about myself in the process. Looking back I would have done many things differently while I was in the relationship. Unfortunately we can’t change the past but we can learn from it and use the experience to live our lives differently in the future.

I spent the last six moths being very angry about what had happened and was trying to analyze and understand it.

I was hurt and could not let go. Last weekend I had to admit that nothing I had tried to find resolution had worked and I decided to take pictures about my experience instead.

I immediately thought of hearts, real hearts and on Sunday I made my way over to Chinatown and after some unsuccessful attempts at local butchers got lucky and walked home with three pounds of chicken hearts and five big pig hearts in my backpack. All I needed now were some props and by Monday my new project was in full swing.

“My Heart” is telling the story of my heart in the emotionaly most difficult time of my life. I use these chicken and pig hearts as stand ins to express how I felt. I’m aware that these images might disturb people and that they are  not for the faint-hearted but neither was my experience.

I have four strong images so far and there are many more to come.

After I shot the first few frames I had to think of a quote by Pablo Picasso: “Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.”

I’m starting to find my resolution.
 
 
 
 
 
 
“My Heart (Part 1)” Williamsburg/Brooklyn/Chicken Heart on metal stick 01-24-12 at 04:20 PM

Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com

After listening to the song I was even more thrilled about the project and very soon had a specific idea about the visuals that were quite out of the box. I want to use this opportunity to thank Jeannine for trusting me to go this non-conformal route!

I also want to thank a few people without their help this video would not have been possible. My friend Eliza Proctor for renting us her space and being such an amazing host. My friend Chris Cassidy for lending me is Cannon 5D Mark II and all his lenses and Meraly Lopez for the beautiful make-up.

I will start editing this weekend and we are planning to have the video released in the first week of February so stay tuned for a big surprise!
 
 
 
 
 
 

“These Days” Music Video/Williamsburg/Brooklyn/On the set/Kent Avenue 01-21-12 at 02:10 PM

Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com

From age 6 to 12 I was living in the German Alps and loved it. When I went  back to Pfronten the little village I used to live in later in life after traveling the world I had to admit that this part of Germany is one of the most beautiful paces I’ve ever been to. As I child I loved the mountains, I loved to be outside, I loved to play in the woods and to climb trees  and the two things I hated most in life were visiting big cities and to shop for cloths.

When I was 12 my mother left my father and my world literally collapsed. My mother had a boyfriend and I ended up staying with them. I still remember the moment I arrived at their apartment the first time. They were living in the industrial area of a small town close to Heidelberg. I got out of the car and there was a depot for garbage trucks right next to the house, a place where they sold cars across the street and a construction company in the basement. After living in New York for 15 years  this sounds like a very cozy place but for a child that loved nature, loved being out hiking and was used to look at mountain range looking out of his living room window it seemed like hell on earth. My mother came out of the house, saw my face and asked me if I wanted her to bring me back to my fathers house and I said no I’m o.k.. To this day I don’t know why I said that because I was far from being o.k..

I never liked to live there but what I did like and what is really cool about industrial areas are weekends. On weekends these areas are completely abandoned. There is nothing going on and then there is so much to discover. All these amazing things human beings build and then neglect, all that  it is so interesting to me. What I still remember about this otherwise emotional very difficult time is that I was roaming the streets on weekends discovering all kinds of things. It was so quiet on those days what reminded me on the Alps, the world that I had loved so much  but had lost.

And as back then in 1983 I took out my bike this summer and biked around in the industrial area behind my building in Williamsburg. Only on weekends of course and as back then I loved the peace and quiet. It was wonderful and when I saw something interesting I stopped and took a picture of it. I spent many hours and many Sundays like that and I had no idea why. Well, I guess I just found out!
 
 
 
 
 
 

“Williamsburg” Wiliamsburg/Brooklyn/Williamsburg Industrial Park 06-26-11 at 07:15 PM

Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com

It almost seems like there is an unquenchable thirst for ink in water images on the web what is understandable since they are very beautiful at times.

I finally got around to drum scan all of the images of that series. Back then I had decided to shoot the project on film. After shooting 50 medium format rolls I processed, contacted and scanned them myself as well.

An enormous amount of work went into this and today I most likely would pull out my digital camera instead but when I look at the images it was all worth it.

A positive side effect of shooting film and scanning it is that you can output the image pretty much any size. Not long ago I printed todays image 24×30 inches large for friends of mine and it looked really stunning that size.

I’m currently in the process of redesigning my website. In a few weeks many more images of this series will be online with the ability to purchase limited edition prints.

Please stay tuned!
 
 
 
 
 
 

“Ink In Water (Part 2)” Williamsburg/Brooklyn/Ink In Water/ May 2010

Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com

Their main purpose was to collect dust and to amaze visitors until I took some images of them about 4 or 5 years ago.

A friend of mine suggested to revisit the project so here is the first one of the ladies in the spotlight in full glory again.

I love the haunted look in her eyes. She seems almost alive and it feels as if she is wondering what she is doing in this strange place being forgotten by the outside world.

I shot a bit over 1000 images so far, I’m 2/3rd through the project by now and will keep on posting more images in the future.
 
 
 
 
 
 

“Forgotten 2011″ Williamsburg/Brooklyn/The Loft/portrait of manikin 11-14-11 at 07:58 PM

Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com

We finally have arrived in 2012 and I like this year already better then 2011 even though it is only two days old. Much has been written about 2012. It is the year the Mayan calendar ends what for a long time has been associated with the end of the world. Will there be no 2013?

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Nobody knows of course but today I will do something I’ve never done on this blog, I will try to predict the future.

Six o’clock – TV hour. Don’t get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn. Lock him in uniform and book burning, blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle, light a motive. Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh, this means no fear – cavalier. Renegade and steer clear! A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.

I don’t think doom and gloom is awaiting us but change is in the air. It might be the year where we will all have to face that our current economical and political system does not work. It might be the year where we have to admit that our in many parts unregulated capitalistic system has failed and we will realize that we will have to change, humanity will have to change. But is that a bad thing?

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Do we want to keep on having to teach our children that the main achievement in life is financial success? Do we want to keep on being ruled by a political system that is controlled by corporate interest? Do we want to continue valuing money more then anything else in the world and being willing to rage war, destroy the environment and let greed run havoc to accumulate it?

The other night I tripped a nice continental drift divide. Mount St. Edelite. Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic, slam, but neck, right? Right.

I predict that in 2012 the world will end as we know it and I feel fine……

it’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine…fine…

                                                                         (lyrics and song by R.E.M.)
 
 
 
 
 
 

“The End Of The World As We Know It?” Queens/World Expo/inside the Unisphere (Globe) 11-25-11 at 06:15 PM

Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com

But while this year was emotionally so difficult it was also the year where I grew the most. Pain is the best teacher. It actually it is the only one. While having a fun time is very enjoyable it doesn’t give us any reason to change but pain does.

At the end I am thankful for all that I was able to learn this year and hope my insights were deep enough that I don’t have to repeat my lessons. I am pretty don’t have to. As I said before pain is a good teacher but a lot of pain is an even better one! Lessons learned.

2012 will be an amazing year and there are already so many great things coming my way. It will be a year for another multimedia project. This time in collobaration with my friend and amazing Australian artist Tania Ferrier. “Talk Black USA” will be shown in 2013.

Please stay tuned. In the new year I will be updating the blog more frequently and there will be “Talk Black USA” blog about the project and its progression.

As the last image for this year I want to share a photograph of one of the people I love most in this world. Yesterday I shot an image of Coko, my friends Michael and Megan’s daughter for a new portrait project I call “Family and Friends”.

To me children are our biggest teachers. We might have knowledge and physical power but children have something we have lost a long time ago. “Innocence”.

I don’t believe in a particular religion but I love this quote from the bible:

To Be a Child! – Matthew 18:2-4

Jesus called a little child to come to him. Jesus stood the child before the followers. Then Jesus said, “I tell you the truth. You must change and become like little children {in your hearts}. If you don’t do this, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The greatest (most important) person in the kingdom of heaven is the person that makes himself humble like this child.” 

So here we go. I spent this year 2011 in agony to become a little bit more like Coko again. My hope is that one day I will return to that state that we all lost so many years ago. That state of innocence, creativity and wonder that was destroyed by the experience we call “life” and that has closed the door on happiness (the kingdom of heaven) on us forever until we return to our original state.

This is my New Years resolution. I want to become like a child again (in my heart) and I bow my head to my teacher Coko Rosker an (almost) five year old girl.
 
 
 
 
 
 

“Happy 2012″ Williamsburg/Brooklyn/Coko Rosker princess and horse lover 12-30-11 at 02:24 PM

Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com

Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com

It is a day that I will never forget. I still believe it was the most beautiful day weather wise that I’ve ever experienced in the almost 15 years I’ve been living in New York City. I was up early that day taking a yoga class starting at 6 AM taught by Batthabhi Jois the founder of ashtanga yoga. The class took place at the Chelsea Piers on the West Side of the city. When I walked out of class I remember vivedly that I looked down south to the Twin Towers and admired the beauty of what I saw. It was New York at its best.

It was about 8 AM and the the world would change forever in 46 minuets.

I had to run back to my apartment on the East Side. I was supposed to take some pictures of the Prada store in Soho which was still in construction and then take a plane to Italy to shoot video sequences that would be displayed on screens at the store after its completion.

While I’m at home getting ready the phone rings. My sister tells me that a plane hit one of the towers. I turn the TV on and only one channel is working (the television antenna was on the tower). Then the second plane hits. I’m looking at my cameras. I should be down there? But what about the job? The cell phone system had broken down already and I was not able to reach my client. I’m trying to call my parents on my land line. I talk to my mother and while I’m talking to her the first tower collapses. I will never forget that moment. I was in total disbelief, all I was thinking was “That can’t be real!”

I knew the area around the towers really well. The first four years in NY I had been living only a block away from them. Every morning I would see thousands of people go to work there. I looked at my cameras again and then realized that I would not be able to go. I was to overwhelmed with what just had happened.

Others did go and put themselves in the line of fire. My friend Lyle Owerko for example who shot the to me most amazing picture that day of the second plane hitting the South Tower. It ended up being the cover of Time Magazine and will be a photograph forever remembered in history.

The image for today’s blog post is an image that I shot a few days before the attacks but it is dear to me since it is the last image I shot of the towers. There is also a story to the image. I wrote about it a few years ago on this blog but here it is again:

“It is a beautiful Indian summer day. One of these almost perfect days in New York. A few clouds in the sky, low humidity and neither too warm or too cold. I have been outside all day enjoying the beautiful weather. New York is a magical place days like today. Early afternoon I make my way over to peer 63. Peer 63 is on the level of 23^rd Street in Manhattan all the way to the west side of the island.

A friend of mine, Bill Hedberg lives on that peer. The right description would actually be he lives in the peer. Bill had his midlife crises. He was frustrated. He used to be a modern dancer and has been a Gryrotonics teacher for about 15 years. Gyrotonics uses like Pilates special machines to stretch and tone the body. Bill was tired to spend all his money for rent. He met the owner of peer 63 who promised him free rent if he would find a way to live on the peer. His apartment/Gyrotonics studio in the peer was originally a freight container He went ahead and spent $ 7000. — and 8 months of 12-14 hour working days to clean out the container, cut out the crossbeams and put in a floor, red carpeting, walls, big mirrors and plumbing. He told me that the construction on the place almost killed him. He working throughout the winter and cut out all these heavy metal beams. But when all the work was done he had a free apartment in New York City.

He uses his place also to build Gyrotonic machines and has four or five machines in his place to teach dancers and anybody else who wanted to stretch and strengthen their bodies. Bill has a girlfriend he very much is in love with and today is her birthday. To surprise her he invited lots of friends and asked these guys who have this tuck boat that is docked at the peer to take all of us out for a little cruise. When I get there in the early afternoon everybody is waiting already and a few minuets later the boat takes of.

We make our way down the Hudson River. As I said before it is a gorgeous day. The sun is high up in the sky and there are boats on the water all around us. Of course I brought a camera since I never leave the house without one. My camera of choice today day is a 30 years old Polaroid Land Camera. I am shooting positiv/negativ Polaroid’s. You basically take an image, pull the Polaroid, wait 30 seconds to develop it and peel off a developed image. Now you have an instant Polaroid image in b/w but also a negative that you have to put into water and later can use to print from. I have a great time taking pictures. The weather, the sun, the skyscrapers and all the boats in the foreground. We are getting to the southern tip of Manhattan. Now we can see the entire southern Manhattan skyline. I keep on shooting. What an amazing place I think, the light, the water, the skyline and the sun reflecting in the World Trade Center.

Today is the 8^th of September 2001; I am taking the last images of the Twin Towers that I will ever take. After we get back to the peer I am still not done with the day. I have all my negatives in a little bucket full of water. But what will I do with the bucket until I get home to clean them and hang them up to dry? I ask my friend Bill if I could leave them with him to come back in a day or two to get them what is not a problem.

I got busy for a couple of days, then 9/11 happened. The area around 23^rd street was sealed off for weeks. I finally get to Bill’s place four weeks later. Most of the water had evaporated, most negatives destroyed. When I got home I was able to save one of them. But because the negative was so long in the water it got heavily damaged. But to me this is the amazing thing about it. The World Trade Center was gone but here is this image of the towers that survived but trough its damage in a certain way mirrors the destruction that followed a few days after it was taken. It is a very meaningful picture to me since it is the last time I photographed the Twin Towers. Not many people have seen it; it is time to share it with the world.”

Story originally written for this blog on 01-12-2008
 
 
 
 
 
 

“9/11″ Manhattan/New York City/World Trade Center 09-08-01

Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com