Today we close out the season with the work of Maroula Blades. We last featured her photography in November 2020. She describes her images below.
I took Silver Birch Wood in early March this year in Hahneberg (Berlin-Staaken). Two elevations in the southeastern part of the Berlin district of Staaken in the borough of Spandau are called Hahneberg: old Hahneberg, which was 67 meters high before the Fort Hahneberg was built there, and new Hahneberg, which was artificially created 87.6 meters above sea level.
The image The Ghostly Wood was taken in later March in Gutspark at Groß Glienicker See, Berlin. Medieval sources recorded the location as a knight’s estate. It was the home of various aristocratic families in the following centuries. The trees themselves are ancient.
Maroula Blades is an Afro-British multifaceted artist living in Berlin. She received the 2021 INITIAL Special Grant from the Academy of Arts in Berlin. In 2020, Chapeltown Books published her short story collection, The World in an Eye. In 2019, Maroula was nominated for the German Amadeu Antonio Prize for her multimedia project, “Fringe.” Her works are published in The Caribbean Writer, Thrice Fiction, Abridged, The London Reader, Ake Review, and Aji, among others.