It took me about a month, but I have finally finished my last development marathon to catch up with the 115 rolls of undeveloped rolls I had lying around at the beginning of autumn. I developed, scanned and now over the last week edited 80 rolls of film. Now I’m through the bulk of it all! There are still some odds and ends lying around – a couple of rolls of Double-X, one roll of Rollei Retro 80s, one roll of Orwo UN54 and a bunch of Rollei Retro 400s – but not any more than I would normally have lying around while being up to date with my processing.

I was obviously eager to start shooting again, but somehow the universe was not cooperating. When the weather finally improved, I came down with a horrible cold which I’m still fighting right now. It made me finish my editing, because I can do that even while I’m slightly delirious, but that’s probably the only good thing about catching a cold. Instead of already having a bunch of test rolls for my E6 experiments I only managed to shoot one single roll of Rollei CN200 and my experiments will still have to wait until I’m better.

So, since I don’t have much to add apart from a little happy dance that I finally caught up with my film development duties, let’s get on with this week’s pictures. First of all you’ll probably need some background though, since I’m not normally one who shoots a lot of events – or any at all, really.

Last year I started somewhat of a long term project by shooting the carnival in Düsseldorf. The idea was to compare different carnival traditions and maybe travel to see some of the most famous carnival traditions around the world. I don’t really know why I started this, because originally I always hated carnival. It is such a terrible mess where I’m from and I used to hide from it while watching 1950s Science Fiction movies all weekend. I guess some of the traditions in other countries interested me though – like carnival in Venice, Basel or Rio. Most of them are terribly photogenic and happen in interesting places, so it should be fun in theory. However, since I can sometimes be somewhat of a masochist (demonstrated by developing 80 rolls of film in one go for example), I thought I get the awful Düsseldorf carnival out of the way early on.

In Düsseldorf the carnival tradition is mainly used to get insanely drunk and do all sorts of stupid things – hooking up with strangers, dancing on tables, that sort of thing – while listening to the most horrific music ever. These days carnival music is a cross between low brow dance music and old German Schlager. Don’t know what Schlager is? Count yourself lucky (or open youtube and be horrified, I’m not providing links, yikes!). And if that wasn’t bad enough, crowds of people also go around singing drinking songs to make things even more unbearable.

You can imagine that shooting the Düsseldorf carnival was quite awful for me and while I was shooting it I was really wondering why I was doing this to myself! After 5 minutes the music was already getting on my nerves and I had to shake several guys who felt that “a girl like me” shouldn’t walk around unaccompanied in this crowd. As always when guys offer to protect me, I wonder “And who will protect me from you?!” The thing I normally do in such a situation is to stay friendly and then lose them in the crowd as quickly as possible. And yes, this has happened to me many times already. Women can’t go to such things unaccompanied without being harassed. Even saying that I’m working doesn’t help, because then I get them saying “Smile for me” and “You should have some fun too”. Ever wondered why I rarely shoot events? Well, this is why.

Although I really hated shooting that particular event, I actually brought back some interesting pictures from weirdo land. The other day I actually made a selection of these pictures for a different project and was quite pleasantly surprised about how it all came together in the end. It turned out even weirder than I expected and that’s saying quite something. So, although I had a terrible time shooting, I actually decided to continue the project, expecting that it could only get less horrible from there. The only problem was that at the beginning of the year I really wasn’t up for carnival travel  – my health was still shaky – and so I decided to see what the local carnival traditions over here are like.

To my surprise carnival here is quite the opposite from what I experienced in Düsseldorf. Here the celebration focuses on the children and the centre of it is a parade in which different groups of dancers, teenagers and children participate. The costumes are elaborate, colourful and usually different groups follow different themes. There was no drinking, everyone was friendly, nobody bothered me while I was shooting – most of the people there were families – and the music only got on my nerves after I finished most of my film anyway. Also in relation to crowd control it was never really scary. In Düsseldorf there was a lot of drunk pushing and shoving, fights and police, but here it was all very civilised. The pictures turned out much less weird than those from last year, but I’m really, really happy with some of them. And after this long introduction, grab a cup of tea and enjoy!

Pictures taken with: Leica M6 with Zeiss ZM C-Biogon 35mm f/2.8 and Voigtländer Nokton 50mm f/1.1. Rolleicord V, Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 75mm f/3.5.

Starting with: M6 / Nokton / Delta 400 / HC-110.

Already a day before the actual carnival celebration started I ran into what seemed to be a very local carnival tradition in our neighbourhood for very small children.

 

Next: Agfa Precisa CT 100 / Tetenal E6.

As always during carnival I pull out some colour film. Randomly I only had some slide film on me because I wasn’t expecting any carnival stuff to be going on a day early.

Don’t ask me what this is about! As always at events involving children one almost only hears Basque so it’s difficult to figure out what’s going on.

Can’t resist a dog fight.

As you can see, this tradition involves drumming on pans with hammers. All traditions here involve some sort of drumming.

APX 400 / HC-110.

© Lilly Schwartz 2016

From here M6 / Biogon. Still APX 400.

Another day I walked into town for one of the bigger carnival events.

 

It started off at the beach front with a procession to the old town later on. The battery of my meter was dying a little and I had lots of backlight, so exposure was a little tricky.

It was still morning, non-alcoholic drinks.

And here I finished off the black and white I had in the camera to switch to colour again.

Kodak Gold 200 / Tetenal C41.

So weird.

Helmets for everyone.

Did I mention lots of backlight? I have to say that Kodak Gold does not hold up well to over-exposure. Superia does much better.

After hanging about for a bit, the procession started.

Lots of tails in this one.

Going towards the old town the lighting became even more tricky with lots of contrast.

Too cute!

These ladies are part of the tradition and the procession was accompanying them to the old town.

I quickly got out of the way. Big heads tend to attack people here traditionally.

Rollei / Portra 400 / Tetenal C41.

Lots of red.

On the stage the typical event happened, the mayor gave the key to the town hall to one of the carnival representatives I believe, to symbolise that for the duration of carnival the town government is somewhat suspended. Not very photogenic and frankly a little boring. So, focus on the crowd.

Some mad costumes. And fighting lots of contrast as always.

Big sad bear.

Scary cupid.

Too much disney for my taste.

Later that day I went to the main event, the big procession through the centre.

M6 / Nokton / Kodak Farbwelt 400 / Tetenal C41.

These folks really could dance.

My favourite of the whole bunch. It’s the shot that really made me fall in love with my Nokton 1.1.

It was sort of blue hour already, so Kodak Farbwelt was really the perfect film choice. I love how these turned out.

How golden!

Some mad costumes, obviously halloween themed, although carnival is in February.

Animal love.

Like father like son.

Here it got a little crowded and it was hard to see the procession, so I focused on the crowd.

Oh look, someone is actually using a payphone!

Partner look. Then I ran out of colour film.

APX 400 / HC-110.

Face on the back of the head.

Partner look.

I used the opportunity to take a picture of the prettiest dog in town.

And then found this wonderful scene. One of my favourites this year.

I was happy to run into these. I took a picture of an astronaut in Düsseldorf too.

A fairy on her way to intervene in a fight between pirates.

Don’t ask me.

Happy dog.

Not sure what was going on with her glove.

Last one.

My verdict? Much more enjoyable to shoot than last year and really quite worth seeing actually. Next year I’ll probably shoot carnival in one of the neighbouring towns with some Fuji rather than Kodak to mix things up a little.