Photographs & Memories

Rio Pardo, Brazil, 17 January 2026 It is not the first time that my Brazilian hosts invited me for lunch at the river restaurant in Rio Pardo where the main and most popular menu is fish and chips. The photo above had been taken from that restaurant which has been moved from its previous location at the same river, due to the devastating floods and  inundations of late April 2024. To me, lunch there felt like it has always felt; the human ability to forget strikes me increasingly as incomprehensible.  

I'm not sure whether an uninformed observer would or could have noticed that I was suffering from lovesickness when Blazenka Kostolna took the above pics. Needless to say, I do know and so looking at these pics brings back this time, including lots of feelings that I'm glad have diappeared. Photographs remind us of something that has been and is no longer. And, that can be a good thing.

Faaker See, 4. November 2025 Im Internet hatte ich gesehen, dass es in der Nähe von Villach Seen gab. Der am schnellsten zu erreichende war der Faaker See, den ich zu umrunden vorhatte, doch der Weg, auf dem ich etwa eine halbe Stunde unterwegs war, befand  sich nicht in Ufernähe, weshalb ich mein Vorhaben frühzeitig aufgab.  

Sistiana, 7 November 2025 It goes without saying, this photo could have been taken pretty much anywhere with a climate similar to the one in Northern Italy in November, However, it was taken in Sistiana, a short train ride from Triest. What do I remember from that time? Mainly, a quiet stony beach with few people enjoying the sun, and an almost intimate conversation with the guy who ran the café at the train station.After seventeen years as a  fisherman he wasn't particularly happy with his present job.  

Santa Cruz do Sul, 5 February 2026 Was mich zu diesem Bild bewogen hat, ist das Dreieck, das Licht und Schatten in diesem Moment, und nur gerade in diesem Moment, hervorgebracht haben. Nichts, das mich momentan mehr bewegt, als die Tatsache, dass das, was wir Momente nennen, nicht zu fassen ist  – ausser mit der Kamera.

Hiroshima, 11 October 2025 No idea, what I expected from my visit to Hiroshima yet it was beyond my imagination that I would be mainly enchanted by its architecture  – that was however exactly how it would be.