i must go to heidelberg this sommer and I would like [...]
Werner Bartsch, the Hamburg-based photographer, has a similar passion for flying machines, and this month he’s profiled in the Interview of the Month.
A couple of years ago while on holiday in California, Bartsch happened upon abandoned aeroplanes in a gated desert compound near Victorville.
‘Suddenly I saw the aircraft which I’d known from my childhood, and the sight of them deeply moved me,’ he told me when we met in Berlin. ‘There were DC-10s and Tristars, plus old DC-8s and 727s which – due to noise and environmental concerns – could never again fly in Europe.’
Forbidden to enter the former USAF airbase, Bartsch began to scan the internet in search of other ‘boneyards’. He identified half-a-dozen storage sites in Arizona where dry climate, low humidity and hard alkaline soil are conducive for long-term storage. He plagued the owners with calls and letters and, in time, was granted unique access to the aeronautical ‘graveyards’ – with his camera.
The result is ‘Desert Birds’, a series of remarkable, moving and unromantic images of deteriorating, once-glorious flying machines just published by Kehrer Verlag. A cockpit opens on an empty landscape. Sunlight glints off the fuselage of a scavenged DC-3. Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential Air Force One – the Super Constellation ‘Columbine One’ named after the state flower of Colorado where his wife was born -- bakes in the desert sun. A gangway stands in the middle of an abandoned expanse, awaiting the arrival of aircraft which no longer fly.
‘This for me is a heart-and soul project,’ Bartsch told me. ‘With “Desert Birds” I’ve taken the time to do something that I’ve always wanted to do, something which touches me deeply.’ Me too.
Maybe instinctively is the best way...