Berlin (Tempelhofer Feld), 2023 Aug 16 · Nikon D850, 50mm f/1.4 · 1/8000, f/9, ISO 1250
On a sunny day at a basketball court within Tempelhofer Feld, a child operates a remote-controlled four-wheel drive — a small-scale apparatus of personal control mirrored against the surrounding architecture's grand-scale apparatus of state control. The court is permitted civic-recreation infrastructure laid over a former military airfield; the child's RC operation is a sub-permission inside that permission. Agency-of-control nests down to the smallest scale at which a body can author its own movement. The child is composed for non-identifiability — distance, posture, framing — which makes the photograph about the operation rather than the operator. The toy car traces a line the runway no longer carries. The bigger architecture quits enforcement, permits the smaller passage.
Tempelhof is the former Nazi prestige terminal and Berlin Airlift site that became Berlin's largest public park in 2010. The terminal, designed by Ernst Sagebiel between 1936 and 1941 as part of Hitler's Welthauptstadt Germania, was at completion among the largest buildings in the world by floor area; it served the Airlift in 1948–49, then US military use through the Cold War, ceasing operations in 2008. Berliners voted in 2014, by two-thirds, against development of the field — the only grand-scale European airport-to-park conversion preserved as commons by popular vote.
Remote Control was one of the three photographs Eric Pan entered in the 6529 Museum's Keys and Gates inaugural accession program. The museum acquired one piece — Now Is Our Time (frame 4B) — now in the permanent collection, liberated to cc0. This one stayed with the artist: 1 of 1, all rights reserved.
A hand-signed print, #1/5 of its edition, is offered as physical gift alongside this unique token.
Keys and Gates, frame 2A.
The full 18-photograph essay: ericpan.org/keys-and-gates-essay
This photograph is © Eric Pan.
