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Eric Fichtl

WELCOME

Thank you for visiting. This website features my photography and writing. Learn a bit more about me.

<p>'Memory' and 'vote blank' – two slogans summarising popular exasperation with the post-dictatorship Argentine political landscape. <br /></p>
PHOTOS

Here is a random sample of my photos. Visit my galleries for many more.


<p>Mother and pup sea lions (lobos marinos) rest on a rocky outcrop in the Beagle Channel, some kilometres offshore from Ushuaia.</p>
<p>A man bails out his boat after a sudden rain shower.</p>
<p>The back room at El Palacio de la Pizza, one of the classic pizzerias along Avenida Corrientes. </p>
<p>An elephant bull roams under the big sky of Kruger National Park.</p>
<p>A view over Setenil de las Bodegas, one of Andalusia's white hill towns. <br /></p>
<p>A promising path?</p>
<p>With the camera positioned just so, this neoclassical cupola appears to sit proportionally atop a modernist base in the heart of Potsdam. It kind of works. <br /></p> <p>They are, though, two separate buildings. The dome belongs to the St. Nicholas Church, which dates from the mid 19th Century when Potsdam was part of the Kingdom of Prussia. In the foreground is the facade of the Institut für Lehrerbildung 'Rosa Luxemburg', a teacher training academy built in the 1970s when Potsdam was part of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).</p> <p>This view no longer exists. <br /></p> <p>A 2010 decision by Potsdam city officials ordered the dismantling of the Institut, which duly occurred in 2017. It is to be replaced by a new structure that will recreate the facade of Prussian palace while masking a contemporary interior – the rationale being to create an architecturally harmonious setting on a key central square. <br /></p> <p>Sound familiar? Berlin also recently opted to remove the DDR-era modernist Palast der Republik (itself built on the site of a Prussian palace the East German government had demolished for its symbolic associations with the imperial past) and erect a simulacrum Prussian palace (the Humboldt Forum project). </p> <p>These decisions – which evoke one history while erasing another – are a continuation of Germany's highly contested reckoning with its past, as Brian Ladd explores in his excellent book, <em>Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape</em>. For some, the frequent consensus for neoclassical lines among politicians and urban planners is a canny dodge reflecting a certain conservatism – it seeks to escape the extremes of the 20th Century (including their manifestations in architecture) by locating historically safe ground in the perceived unity of the imperial Germany of the Kaisers. But that preference is a hagiographic illusion (the clue is in the word 'imperial'), and opts for an allegorical amnesia over a challenging architectural response to the complexity of the German experience. <br /></p> <p>There is something incredibly uninspired (not to say regressive) about rebuilding long-gone imperial palaces on sites where the ground is both hallowed and historically contested. And as beautiful as neoclassical facades may be (and Berlin and Potsdam have plenty of them to show off), as 21st Century new-builds they are dated symbols that fail equally at capturing nuanced historic legacy and at presenting the forward-looking aspects of contemporary German society. </p>
<p>A Colombian soldier with his pet spider monkey.</p>
TEXTS

A lot of what I write professionally carries no by-line. Here are some of the works I have put my name to.

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When Disaster Strikes: Considerations for Helping Relief Efforts

The decision to head to a disaster area is not one that should be taken without first considering the complexities of the situation.
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Free Speech and the Limits of Tolerance: The Case of David Irving

Is it acceptable to impede the airing of unpopular ideas, or do we all lose out by trying to do so?
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Let Them Eat Cake… The End of the Tortilla Subsidy in Mexico

The cost of that most Mexican of basic foodstuffs jumped by 25% as the government repealed price control legislation.