Puppet Shows & German Neighbors

The world is a strange place and so much of it is relative. In other words, we seek truth, we want truth, and sometimes we even believe we have truth, but most of the time it’s not truth at all, only our interpretation of truth. (Please keep in mind when I say “truth” I’m referring to "reality" – mostly).

I have a funny and relevant story to tell you now that I’ve laid that ground work. I’m writing it down, because I want to refer to it when I see something and assume that I know what it is without inquiring or doing research about it. It will force me to ask questions and do the research before I make up my mind as to what it is I’m seeing, reading or listening to, I hope.

In Germany, you’re always being watched. At least to some degree. If you have 80 year-old German neighbors, like we do, most likely, everything you do that can be observed, will be observed. I have my own opinions on why this is, but it would defeat the point I’m trying to make and would take much longer to write about than I have time for (I have to be in a certain mood and a certain frame of mind to "blog" – I just can’t "turn it on" whenever I want).

Anyway, our neighbors, the Knopps (Ka-Nops) let our landlord know that they were very upset about us putting some plastic in the wrong recycle bin. We have four, yes four, recycle bins: paper, Gelbe (yellow sack, for plastic, wrappers, etc), Bio (for coffee grounds, food waste, etc.), and Abfalle (yard waste, leaves, grass clippings, tree limbs, etc.).

The Knopps inspect what’s in the bins and keep a tight reign on recycling waste. Sometimes, we make mistakes, but not often. On a side note, about a month ago, not far from here, a German man beat his neighbors to death for putting the yard waste in the wrong bin – true story. The Knopps also told our landlords that we need to spend more time on our yard and sweeping the street on Saturday morning (German ritual – to stave off chaos).

Now you have a good sense of what our neighbors are like (which is typical here) let me tell you the rest of the story. The Knopps had one last thing to tell our landlords about us. Most every weekend, you can find me, and a lot of times Summer, making photographs (Wet Plate Collodion) on our winter garden. The Knopps can see what we do – so I would imagine they’ve watched us make a lot of photographs. But going back to my original point, what the Knopps watch is not two artist’s working in their studio making photographs, they see the American neighbors putting on puppet shows, yes, I said puppet shows. They mean this in a derogatory way, too. Does that blow your mind? I can understand why they “see” that. The camera is always facing the opposite way from their view and every time someone goes under the dark-cloth it must look like a performance as the sitter is looking on and sometimes holding props or wearing some kind of costume. I can’t imagine what the dark-box represents – maybe that’s where we make the puppets? Can you imagine what they’re thinking as they are watching the puppet show from the crack in their window blind? Wow! I was blown away and literally started laughing when I heard this and it’s been on my mind since. I now refer to making Wet Plate Collodion photographs, as a puppet show - “Hey Summer, do you want to do a puppet show today?”