elsie
haddad

Berlin, November 2013. 

I am in front of Bogota Hotel.

I enter.

Else Simon “Yva”, a renowned artist and a pioneer of fashion photography,

lived here, it was in the 1930s. 

Her apartment was on the fifth floor.

Helmut Newton was here too. He was her disciple, doing two years at her studio.

I have my camera.

I stop thinking.

I start taking pictures.

An old man with a camera, speaks to me.

He reminds me the photographs of Sophie Calle with his long white trench coat and hat.

I take the stairs; I’m in the second floor. 

A forty-year-old man is strolling around.

I take his picture. Is he that same man I met, that long time ago?

I continue walking…

everything smells 30s, Yva, Helmut...

the corridors, the paintings on the wall, hanged photographs, the reading room…the piano.

A lot happened here.

I imagine stories.

A rendezvous?

A lover?

The idea of a lover?

I walk inside rooms…the beds are messed up, I remember the 

previous night, many nights.

I feel like I am in a time capsule.

Everything is still here.

I look through the window.

A heavy heart.

All this never existed. All this will never exist.

The hotel has been sold.