When I  was a kid, we honestly believed that World War III – between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union – would start here at Checkpoint Charlie. That's the little white-painted wooden hut, in the middle distance, with the ersatz sandbags in front of it and sitting in the middle of what is now a busy shopping district in the centre of Berlin. Back then is was the border between the US and Soviet zones – but now the Soviet Union has gone, Germany has been reunified and Checkpoint Charlie reduced to a tourist destination. I took the picture late at night, using a far too small camera and holding it in my hands rather than of a more substantial support – but that is the nature of the genre. I was also intrigued that there is now a museum dedicated to the Stasi – the old East German secret police – which, at the time I was visiting the city, was holding an exhibition looking at the surveillance techniques they used to employ.



(Berlin, 23:43pm, May 19, 2008, f 3.6 - 1/80 - ISO 800)