Reichstag Dome Berlin Germany | Black and White Architecture Photography

Reflections and Geometry Inside Berlin’s Reichstag Glass Dome

I wasn't interested in photographing the Reichstag dome simply as another famous Berlin landmark. What caught my attention was what happened inside it.

Looking through the glass and steel structure, people appear again and again in the reflections. Some are immediately recognizable; others dissolve into fragments. A single visitor can seem to occupy several places at once, repeated across panes of glass and interrupted by the heavy architectural framework.

For me, that confusion is the photograph.

I made the image in Berlin in 2014, looking into the interior of the Reichstag's glass dome. Rather than trying to simplify the scene, I embraced its complexity. The dark structural beams divide the frame into a series of irregular compartments, and within each one there seems to be another small scene unfolding.

The longer I look at it, the less certain I become about what is physically in front of me and what is only a reflection. People overlap. Lines change direction. Glass surfaces reveal one level while simultaneously reflecting another.

Black and white pushes the photograph even further toward abstraction. Without color, I am left with geometry, repetition, movement and contrast. The architecture almost becomes a grid containing dozens of tiny human moments.

That's what interested me most about photographing the Reichstag dome. It is a remarkable piece of modern architecture, but I didn't want a conventional architectural photograph.

I wanted the visual puzzle hidden inside it.

© Dan Kosmayer, 2013