An eye-opening trip through a brave new world has been recalled by a South West press photographer to mark 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Gavin Crilly was a 25-year-old freelancer in November 1989 and, after seeing the first images of east and west unite on TV, he hotfooted it to Heathrow to fly out to the German city.

Now working for Bristol’s Evening Post, Gavin says that as soon as he saw the TV footage of people meeting at the Wall, he knew had to go east to “photograph history as it happened”.

“I didn’t take any luggage. I just had a big camera bag and an armful of Mars bars to keep me going,” he said.

“It was dark when I arrived, and I walked straight into an anti-fascist march that was winding its way through the streets.

“I’d covered plenty of demonstrations in this country, but I was taken aback to see that the police in Berlin were heavily armed.

“That’s the moment when I began to realise just how serious this situation was.”

Armed with some basic German and a few Deutsche Marks, Gavin decided to sleep rough on the first night only for a German woman to take pity on him and offer him a bed.

He then spent three days walking along the wall and documented the events which were unfolding before his eyes.

“It was interesting to see the contrast between the West and the East. By that point, the west side of the wall was covered from top to bottom in graffiti, and Berliners were attacking the wall,” he said.

“When you went through into No Man’s Land, it was clear to see that the East Germans had been more reluctant about attacking the wall – the graffiti had only just started appearing.

“Even when I was there, the East German guards were still standing on the wall, looking down at the public, in a bemused sort of way.

“Just a few days earlier, people would have been shot for even entering No Man’s Land from the east, so it’s hard to know what must have been going through the minds of those guards as they stood there watching.”

Are you marking the 20th anniversary with your own local take on this historic event? Please let us know by emailing [email protected].

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Below are some of the images Gavin took in Berlin and he can be seen in the first one in front of the Brandenburg Gates.

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Comments

Unhappysnapper (11/11/2009 16:51:13)
Fantastic quality to these pictures to say that they were taken on film in the days before all this digital malarkey!