When we moved here to Berlin about a month ago, I was expecting – and looking forward to – experiencing all the differences, large and small, between life in the US (if the New York City area qualifies) and life here in Germany.  A lot of what I’ve come across here was entirely expected: the healthy work-to-live attitude, the not-so-healthy attitude towards smoking (the otherwise cautious and sensible Germans seem not have gotten that memo yet), the smaller personal environmental footprint, the thoroughness and competency, that inscrutable Northern European reserve – the list goes on and on…

I’ve come across some unexpected differences, too  – for one thing, I now consider New York a relatively polite place (there is a German term for “excuse me” – but I can assure you that you won’t hear it on the sidewalks or subways of Berlin – ever).

On the other hand, there are more than a few pleasant surprises to be had  here as well – and one of them is the consistently high quality of German photojournalism.  Granted, when I pick up a copy of Der Spiegel or Stern, I can’t do much other than look at the pictures (yet) – but even so, the quality, honesty, and story-telling impact of the print media photography I’ve seen here is striking.  Photojournalism here in Germany, it seems, is simply operating at a higher level than what we’re used to (or what we’ve become used to) back in the US.

A paean to the lowly magazine photograph on a technology/new media blog?  Why not – because at the end of the day, doesn’t content quality deserve at least as much mention as any technical aspects of the medium and/or the delivery platform(s) carrying that content?

So if a picture is in fact ‘worth a thousand words’, maybe it would be worth 1024 words here on digitalmissive – but even though I’m sorely tempted to grab a few of the compelling photos from the “Fotografie” sections of the Der Spiegel and Stern websites and republish them here in an effort to entice you to visit the websites yourself, you’ll just have to take my word for it: although the best shots seem to be reserved for the print editions, both publications’ sites are still well worth a visit.

Tscheuss von Berlin…