 
Images © Frank Rothe
Growing up in what was once East Berlin, Germany, 12-year-old
Frank Rothe missed an opportunity to attend a Russian summer
camp because his name was deleted from the list of campers. Twenty
years later, he visited the camp, photographed the boys and girls
and, he says, "rediscovered some big and small pieces of
my childhood."
Those moments are captured in Running Through
the Wind, which
is featured in the Griffin Museum's Emerging Artist Gallery January
24 through March 30.
When Rothe arrived at the camp, Artek, in 2004, he says he "found
what I was looking for; the new generation of the East. I photographed
them as they were, with no flash, no tripod, only using natural
light at day and night time.
"For me, as a photographer, it was a journey back in time," he
says. "I traveled back into a period of my life that does
not exist anymore. This generation belonging to neither West
nor East I call Running Through the Wind."
"Frank Rothe's color images of students at a pioneer camp
on the Crimean peninsula in the Ukraine exude the confidence
and freedom Rothe has spent his whole life racing to find," says
Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum.
"Running Through the Wind illustrates Rothe's coming to
terms with his own freedom and self confidence in the years after
the fall of the Berlin Wall. His photographs are visual narratives
that focus on the faces and characters of his adolescent subjects
and the atmosphere of the present world in which they live."
Rothe, born in 1972, began his career as a journalist in Berlin,
Germany. He also wrote a novel. He was inspired to become a photographer,
he says, because "over the years as a journalist, I wrote
many stories that formed pictures in my head. I developed a sense
of what people think and about their characters, as well as their
inner life and dreams."
And, he said, "I was often unhappy with the photographers
who supplied the pictures for my stories. I thought I could do
better. . . . That is why I started taking pictures for my own
articles." He later was mentored by Berlin photographers
Arno Fischer and Ute Mahler.
An opening reception for Running Through
the Wind is January
24, 7-8:30 p.m.. It is open to all. Please RSVP by January 18.
The Griffin Museum of Photography is open Tuesday through Thursday,
11:00 am - 5 pm; Friday 11:00 am - 4 pm; and Saturday and Sunday,
12:00 - 4 pm. The Museum is closed on Monday.
Admission is $5 for adults; $2 for seniors. Members and children
under 12 are admitted free. Admission is free to all every Thursday.
For more information, call 781-729-1158.
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