El cielo sobre Berlin

Berlin's Destruction
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Before he pressed the shutter release, my father composed the photos in his mind. To position the Leica or Rolleiflex at the right angle, they circled several times around a site. For him the most important thing about these shots was the shadows. Without shadows, my father told me, aerial photographs look lifeless. Once he called off a flight because clouds suddenly blocked out the sun. He was incredibly picky when the light and shadow weren't right.

His always paid great attention to detail. In his studio, he would sometimes spend hours rearranging the lights until the effect was right for his Linhoff plate camera. He was a perfectionist. But his book of aerial photographs was never published. My father worked tirelessly, preferably at night when he had his best ideas. To keep himself awake, he had developed a taste for so-called "pilot's chocolate" during the war. It contained the stimulant Pervitin and was created to keep bomber pilots awake on their long flights to England. Friends and acquaintances returning from their flights brought him some back. In the end he became addicted to it.
His addiction affected both his work and private life. My parent's marriage ended at the end of 1944 when my father divorced my mother to marry a co-worker, who he soon also left. When he married my mother a second time, he promised it wouldn't happen again, but his promise didn't last. In 1946 he divorced my mother, who then moved with my sister and me to West Germany. He went to a clinic several times for withdrawal treatment, but he never overcame his addiction. He died in 1967.
The aerial photos taken by Adolph Carl Byers and Hein Gorny were published 65 years after they were taken, through the Berlin-based Collection Regard. The photos, which his son Peter Gorny had thought were lost, were included in the exhibition "Hommage à Berlin," devised by collector Marc Barbey in 2011. The book of the exhibition has been published in German, French and English. Information on odering the book can be found here.
This story originally appeared in German on SPIEGEL ONLINE's history portal, einestages.de