Culture and education instead of windsurfing

Yesterday I decided to drive to Vienna instead of having a windsurfing session. By coincidence, Kerstin had an eye on the big pack of post and advertising stuff we received within the last three weeks. She found an invitation to a public reading of three famous authors. They all should read out of their first book, which got published and telling stories how it felt and how it was to write the first one.

Sitting there in the room with two famous authors – Gerhard Roth did not appear – felt great. Listening to words, which were written out of passion, influenced by experiences and dreams. Katja Lange-Müller started and Doron Rabinovici continued. She told about the hard life in Berlin and later on in Mongolia. Doron got dragged by the parents to Austria in the age of 3 and had to learn the German (Austrian language) to get integrated in school, to read Brecht and later on to create the novel figure Papiernik.

I learnt quite a lot while the 90 minutes and will keep an eye on further readings.

Later on Kerstin and myself showed up at the “Magnum´s first” exhibition in the Westlicht. Imagine, after 50 years the Institut Français in Innsbruck returned an exhibition to the photographers of the Magnum Agency. It had been stored in a cellar and forgotten.
â??Magnum Photo. Gesicht der Zeitâ? consists of 83 vintage prints by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Marc Riboud, Jean Marquis, Werner Bischof, Robert Capa and the Austrians Erich Lessing, Inge Morath and Ernst Haas. The central theme of the exhibition is photographic â??Humanismâ?. There were pics of Ghandi 1 day before he died and great streetphotographie of Inge Morath. My favourites were Werner Bischof, who left his life in the Andes and Marc Riboud, who portrait the landscape and people of Dalmatia – one of my favourite landscapes in Europe – back in the 50ties.

Anyway, it was great to be that close to this old shots. Shots you normally only will view in books.

Passing the “FIAKERS” at the Stephans square in the first district of Vienna

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Authors with success (from the left to the right): Katja Lange-Müller, Renatus Deckert & Doron Rabinovici
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Werner Bischof: “Cambodia”
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