The End is Near, Here
Hartmann, 2024
Michael Dressel, born in East Berlin in 1958, is a wanderer between American and German culture. His regular journeys between his home towns on the American West Coast and Berlin have sensitized him to recognize the social changes of recent decades more clearly than most locals. His second book shows his view of American society on the eve of a historic election. The Americans have a choice between sanity and madness, between an orderly civiln state and increasing decay and chaos. From a Central European perspective, the choice seems clear, but to get a sense of the current state of mind of Americans, it helps to look at this book with its end-time title. Dressel’s impressive images show a society on the edge of the abyss, marked by extreme nationalism, political polarization, religious fanaticism, gun mania coupled with paranoia and pervasive poverty and moral decay. His portraits are complemented by landscape photographs that speak their own gloomy language.
Sample images from the book
LOST ANGELES
Ginko Press, 2022
Michael Dressel’s street photography relies on his long practiced ability to anticipate events that are about to happen and the readiness to capture these moments. In Lost Angeles, the viewer is invited to view some of Dressel’s most poignant portraits and to be transported to that moment and place. Dressel professes to loving Los Angeles “warts and all” and is clearly comfortable moving through the city’s streets, angling for those “magical” moments and showing us things that most would rather look away from. Mr. Dressel was born in East Berlin and spent 2 years in a Stasi prison after being captured while climbing the Berlin wall. He moved from Berlin to Los Angeles in 1986 and has spent the past 35 years taking photos while making a living as a movie sound editor. Lost Angeles features an interview with F. Scott Hess, artist and associate professor at Laguna college of Art along with an afterword by Matthias Harder, the director of the Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin. The black & white photographs collected for Lost Angeles were taken between 2014 – 2020.
Sample images from the book
