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PhotographyBerlin Tiergarten, August 2009.
August 10th, 2009
photography Category
They say the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time.
But since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure the trick is to find the right place and just hang around.
– Calvin and Hobbes
August 5th, 2009
Ich habe gerade einen Anruf aus Berlin erhalten und erfahren, dass ich mit meinem Bild Potsdamer Platz (hier in höherer Auflösung zu sehen) in den Top10 beim Berlin-Fotowettbewerb gelandet bin, der von Foto Meyer veranstaltet wurde.
*yay* !!!
PS.: Habe eine Panasonic SDR S9 abzugeben – neu & OVP. Bei Interesse bitte melden, ich nehme 10% weniger als den billigsten Preis, der im Netz zu finden ist.
April 28th, 2009
Woher kommt dieser Zwang, “in die Kamera zu lächeln”? Es ist eine Manie. Eine Möglichkeit, die Aufmerksamkeit auf die Kamera zu lenken. “Hier ist das Vögelchen!” Das Lächeln ist integraler Bestandteil von Familienphotos. Mütter wollen ihre Kinder nicht mit einem unglücklichen Gesicht sehen. Meine Mutter engagierte gelegentlich einen Photographen, um ein Familienphoto zu machen, und der bat uns unweigerlich zu lächeln. Es ist ein Konserven-Lächeln. Gezwungen. In den fünziger Jahren musste alles heile Welt sein, obwohl die Welt oft alles andere als heil war. Wenn ich einen Menschen auffordere zu lächeln, bitte ich ihn meinem Verständnis nach, sich zu verstellen, aber das wurde mir erst nach vielen Jahren klar.
February 13th, 2009
I just watched the documentary War Photographer by Christian Frei, a portrait of James Nachtwey.
It is a very powerful movie; it is a difficult movie, but a very true one.
Take yourself 3 minutes, and read the following text. Slowly, patiently, carefully.
That’s how Nachtwey reads it.
There has always been war. War is raging throughout the world at the present moment. And there is little reason to believe that war will cease to exist in the future. As man has become increasingly civilized, his means of destroying his fellow man have become ever more efficient, cruel and devastating.
Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography? The proportions of that notion seem ridiculously out of balance. Yet, that very idea has motivated me.
For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke a sense of humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war and if it is used well it can be a powerful ingredient in the antidote to war.
In a way, if an individual assumes the risk of placing himself in the middle of a war in order to communicate to the rest of the world what is happening, he is trying to negotiate for peace. Perhaps that is the reason why those in charge of perpetuating a war do not like to have photographers around.
It has occurred to me that if everyone could be there just once to see for themselves what white phosphorous does to the face of a child or what unspeakable pain is caused by the impact of a single bullet or how a jagged piece of shrapnel can rip someone’s leg off – if everyone could be there to see for themselves the fear and the grief, just one time, then they would understand that nothing is worth letting things get to the point where that happens to even one person, let alone thousands.
But everyone cannot be there, and that is why photographers go there – to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on – to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference – to protest and by the strength of that protest to make others protest.
The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I am benefiting from someone else’s tragedy. This idea haunts me. It is something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition I will have sold my soul. The stakes are simply too high for me to believe otherwise.
I attempt to become as totally responsible to the subject as I possibly can. The act of being an outsider aiming a camera can be a violation of humanity. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person’s predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other, and to that extent I can accept myself.
— James Nachtwey
(Thanks to Basti for the recommendation.)
January 18th, 2009
What’s going on?
The short version:
- I had a photo-shooting a few weeks back for a theatre project.
- The photographs were published twice in the German newspaper AZ (Abendzeitung), and once in the German newspaper SZ (Süddeutsche Zeitung).
- You will find a report on the shooting, the project, a few final photos, and (of course) the parts of the newspaper my photographs were in!
The long version:
Most of you guys know that I’m doing photographs now and then.
A few weeks back, Julia, a colleague and friend of mine, told me that her and two friends were performing a theatre play in a few weeks, and asked me if I would be willing to do a photoshooting because they were in need of material for PR, advertising and such. The project is called “Orpheus & Eurydike”, and is a theatre play with an actor, a piano player, and a singer. You can find more details on the play on their website.
After recently completing an awesome workshop on exactly that kind of topic, I agreed, and we met on a very warm Friday afternoon in the “Hofgarten” (a public park) in Munich. The problem was that they needed the photographs *immediately*, and since I was going to go on holidays for a week on Saturday morning, I had to work the whole night. Another problem was that the sun was still very bright (even at 5 and 6 pm), so I had to use rather extreme flashlight. The idea was to get some photographs with a little bit of surreal flair (Orpheus & Eurydike, is, after all, quite an epic fantasy story).
We went to work, finished after around 8 hours. Julia came home with me, and we spent the night in front of my computer (till 6am), me working on photoshop, her telling me what details to keep and which ones to work on, what photographs to delete and which ones to take, et cetera.
You can see two final results here and here.
Now, due to many press-contacts, Julia was able to place infos on the play in different newspaper (twice in the AZ, once in the SZ).
Rock’n Roll!
August 15th, 2008
Today I want to write about one of the greatest inventions in the sector of art I’ve heard of so far: the Image Fulgurator.
It was invented by the 24 year old German art student Julius von Bismarck.
What does it do? It is a camera that is triggered when another camera that is not too far away uses its flash. But the Image Fulgurator doesn’t simply produce pictures, it uses a flash and and an analogue picture in the camera in order to project that picture onto an object for a very short time; it will therefor appear on the photographs of other people.
Imagine taking a picture of a famous building, just to see it on flames if you check it afterwards in your digital camera; or a huge brandname on a famous building, which clearly wasn’t there when you took the photograph. Or some text on the clothing of a star …
Julius calls the device (translated from German) “apparatus for minimal-invasive manipulation of photographs”, and he thinks of it as an analogue hack. I love the idea.
Here are the technical details, and here is an article about the Image Fulgurator (SZ magazine).
[ the photograph shown above was shot by Richard Wilhelmer; thanks to Verena for sending me the link! ]
July 29th, 2008
