Olympus already amazed with the first concept of “Photography Playground” back in 2013, when it took place at Opernwerkstätten.
Since then, the exhibition has toured around Europe, in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Spain and Denmark, bringing a different and unique art theme in each exhibition.
Four years and fifteen exhibitions later, the playground came back to Berlin again!
For those who are not familiar with the interactive Perspective Playground yet, the idea behind it is to create unique photo shooting sets and art installations, to let visitors play around with the camera, free their imagination and, above all, have fun with the photography through the interaction with the artworks.
One of the funniest and most exciting part is, of course, the opportunity to use the latest camera models by Olympus. You can choose among several models of the OM-D and Olympus PEN series. To borrow them is entirely free of charge and don’t worry: you can keep the SD card included and bring home all your pictures! As I already have an Olympus PEN, I took my Olympus E-PL8 with me and started paling around.
Staff members were very friendly and well prepared. They were happy to give tips on the camera set-up, explain more about the artwork or simply take a picture of you and your friends in the photo set! A good opportunity for me to ask more about how to use my camera in darker places.
This year the exhibition took place in a new fantastic location: the Kraftwerk Berlin at Köpenicker Strasse 70, in Mitte.
This venue alone is already enough to take one’s breath away: a former heating power station,
composed of an huge open space on two levels with a ceiling height of 20 meters, made of concrete.
Definitely, one of my favorite locations in Berlin.
The Kraftwerk offers a very dark environment. This allowed the artists to play with visual and sound effects, colors, shadows and lights, space and materials in a more efficient way compared to the first venue, said the artistic director Leigh Sachwitz.
The nine artists who designed the photo shooting sets and the art installations are young talents named : Thilo Frank, Xaver Hirsch, Adam Scales + Ari + Pierre Berthelomeau, Poetic Kinetics, Gabriel Pulecio, Quintessenz and Liz West. Leigh herself and her studio Flora&faunavisions participated with the installation “Without You”.
All the artworks and photo shooting sets were very exciting to photograph and explore.
One of the most impressive artwork was the “Neo Prayer Flag” by Patrick Shearn (Poetic Kinetics) that I took thousands of pictures of from every angle : A suspended sparking stripe of 750mq, made of metalized plastic streamers on monofilament netting, rope, and elastic cord that went through the whole building changing form and color, and following the wind currents.
Another artwork I enjoyed very much is “Our Colour Reflection” by Liz West: 765 colorful mirrors, placed on the floor, reflect and reveal small details of the building and project color up on the wall and columns of the Kraftwerk. Here again I took many pictures of it from all possible angles. It was so much fun to take pictures of.
Enjoy the pictures I took in the Playground!
Read my other articles about my Olympus camera :
About lenses, you can find my article on which lens I am using for the Olympus PEN
Review of the Olympus PEN E-PL8
Review of the Olympus PEN E-PL9 Advanced Photo Mode
Review of the accessories for the Olympus PEN : a wild leather camera bag and a leather camera bag and pouches for the lenses.
Why the Olympus PEN is the best camera for fashion bloggers, tips to take outfit pictures and tips to take the best travel pictures.
*ADVERTISEMENT – This article is written in collaboration with Olympus. All opinions remains my own.
*** Written by Stefania Casiraghi
