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If you have ever asked yourself where to buy a well kept Monchichi for a reasonable price, look no further. When the night descends upon Bangkok and the temperature (with a bit of luck) drops below 30 degrees, it is time to hit one of the capitals night-markets. Depending on the location you can finally complete your collection of fluffy toys, buy an old Vespa or impress your partner with a two-meter-high parrot flower. For last months “Lufthansa Magazin” I checked out a few of these splendid markets, and while I was at it, bought myself a nice pair of jeans for 10 euros. Having them shortend back in Germany: also 10 euros. Well, it is always good to distribute great wealth equally…

For the second collection of young baby-clothing lable smoob, we had to surrender yet again to another rainy summer. To keep our little models warm and dry, we rolled out the green carpet in the studio instead.

 

 

For the past five years the Knesbeck Verlag has published a pug-calendar with pictures that where taken from the book “Der Mops“, which I shot in 2004. For the 2012 calender they had used up almost every colour photo from the book, and asked if I would go out into the field again to take some new pictures. Of course I happily accepted, looking very much forward to listen to the huffing and puffing of the little hair-balls again.
They are just cool creatures, so hurry and buy the calender to secure my future pug-engagement. It’s only four month until the new year starts!

 

(weiterlesen …)

Today the exhibition “Schlafanzüge und Beton” enters its final week.
Along with the Chinese photographers Shan Liyuan und Cao Jianguo, I’m showing 23 photos from my short trip to Shanghai in 2011.
The exhibition combines my perspective of the city as a stranger, with Shan Liyuan’s work on families who live in an old silk-weavers quarter.
Cao Jianguo has been recording the vanishing buildings of the old Shanghai for several years.

Rathaus Hamburg, free entrance
Opening hours: Mo-Fr 7 am-19 pm, Sa 10-17 Uhr, So 10 am-16 pm

If you take a ride with the Deutsche Bahn this August you will probably find yourself eye to eye with one of Germany’s best comedians – Bastian Pastewka.
First time we met, which was at the dawn of his career, we created a special kind of “home story” for the magazine Stern. This time I chose a dummy-factory for our photo session. Since he is a great observer of his fellow humans, but doesn’t necessarily like to be surrounded by too many of them, I found dummies to be the perfect compromise.

My latest expedition to animal kingdom led me to the organic farm of Henning Bauck and his partner Sabine.

In cooperation with VW, food magazine “Essen und Trinken” chose to feature Bauck’s farm, since they deliver some of their meat products to Volkswagen’s Autostadt. Apart from doing that Henning collects all kinds of exotic animals, which he claims find the perfect habitat in Lower-Saxony. He also employs his two daughters to decorate the henhouse, and buys his cattle old phone booths to let them keep in touch.
Henning takes care of the whole production process: breeding, farming, butchering and selling. If he also sleeps I don’t know…

 

Shortly before hordes of football fans descended upon Warsaw, Greenpeace Magazin sent me to photograph the headquarters of Greenpeace Poland. There I met a bunch of very funny and friendly people who take a slighltly more humoristic approach towards saving the environment than their German colleagues. I was especially impressed by the melange of stickers with polar bears on electric chairs, tibetan prayer flags, blasting Novalis records and a playboy calendar. And last but not least it was the place where I found a huge evil bioengineered potato.
That’s the spirit!

Agatha, campain coordinator

Katarzyna, activist & press spokeswoman and Maciej, head of Greenpeace Poland

Anna, fundraiser and Iwo, activist and energy expert

Robert, special projects and Joanna, genetic engeneering expert

Michał, database manager

For the July issue of German Rail’s magazine “mobil” I visited Abc – Tiertraining who train and rent out animals for film productions.
The assignment was to photograph the animals doing all their amazing film-tricks. Initally expecting rabbits that jump through rings of fire and similar stuff, the owner Marco quickly made clear that the main trick his animals pull off, is to stay in one place. Well, at least sometimes.
For lack of spectacular animal stunts “mobil” decided to go for snaps from film productions instead. I still had a fun day with sitting pigs, baby foxes, yawning cats, grinning goats and got a decent suntan.

You can read the full story here.

 

 

While spending last winter in Bangkok, the magazine BEEF assigned me to do an interview with a Thai chef on the subject of chillies. This gave me the chance to photograph and interview the owner of one of my favourite street food stalls, Cook Chom. Cooking for big hotels half of his life, he decided to open up his own place in Bangkok a few years ago, in order to spend more time with his family.
His claim to fame is to cook European-Thai fusion dishes for rock bottom streetfood prices. The food is great and you’ve just got to love his style…

If you feel like trying: Cook Chom, Thewet Pier, Samsen Rd., Bangkok

 


read on…

For the new magazine “Viva“, another line extension of the “Stern”, I visited three people who have, at some point in their lives, started a second career.
Urte Schönfeld taught indian woman how to knit, Jörg Strempel builds models of ships in museum-quality, and Agnes Flügel turned from journalist to beekeeper.
You can buy Agnes’ delicious honey here.

For last weeks cover story of “Stern” magazine on cosmetic surgery, I took some pure shots of members of their editorial staff. To illustrate what could be done to shave off a few years, the portraits were then digitally ‘optimised’.
People out there! Save yourself the hassle, you look good as you are.

For the German weekly “Der Freitag” I took one of the rare trips into my neighbourhood to take a portrait of singer Marie Biermann. Not being a great fan of tags, I for once decided to use them as a backdrop. Not only are they all around the “hood”, but in this case I thought them to be an adequate symbol for the assets and drawbacks of names. Marie is the daughter of the famous songwriter Wolf Biermann.

Every now and then a well-meaning picture editor remembers that I spent 20 years photographing dolls for the German doll manufacturer “Annette Himstedt”. Since Annette closed down her company my expertise in handling small things lies sadly dormant for most of the time. That’s why I was delighted when Men’s Health called me to photograph their Woman-Survival-Guide.
The magazine cunningly identified all four female riders of the apocalypse -
girlfriend, colleague, mother and best friend – and gave advice on how to survive their devilishness.
My job was to translate typical troubles with the other sex into easily recognizable visuals, for those poor downtrodden male magazine readers.

To get the right atmosphere, I decided to use real sets and limit the amount of post production to an absolute minimum. Thanks to set builder Nils Emde for creating these modern day pillories. Here you see the lead pictures of the series:

The other week I had a very charming visitor in my studio. A wild grey goose.
It has now appeared on the cover of the magazine “Beef”.
I do feel slightly guilty for using this beauty as a proxy for a christmas roast, but animal lovers and vegetarians don’t need to fret. This guy didn’t end up in the oven.

In 2006 the Greenpeace Magazine started the column “Tu Was!” (Do Something!),
a series with tips on “how to create a better world”. 77 of them, from which I
photographed 24, have now been made into book. It has just been released, is a lot of
fun and a perfect present.
You can order HERE

In 2006 startete das Greenpeace Magazin mit der Kolumne “Tu Was!”, einer Serie mit “Denkanstößen für eine Bessere Welt”. 77 dieser Tipps, von denen ich 24 fotografiert habe, gibt es jetzt als Buch. Ein großer Spaß und ein perfektes Geschenk.
Bestellen kann man es HIER

I am happy about a ten page portfolio of my work published in the new issue of the German photo magazine “Digit!”. The 4-2011 edition puts a special focus on editorial photography. Next to some of my images there is also an enlightening text by Peter Schuffelen and a short interview.
You can see an excerpt HERE but for the real thing go to the newsagent and buy it!

By invitation of the local government of Shanghai I was just invited to contribute to the book and exhibition project: Shanghai in the Eyes of World Photographers.

To complete the magnificent seven, there were also Claudio Bonoldi from Milan,  Feco Imperio Hamburger from Sao Paulo,  Elisabeth Montagnier from Marseille, Janolof Fritze  from Gothenburg, Michael Rauner from San Francisco, and Nii Takao from Nagasaki – all sister cities of Shanghai.

Our Chinese hosts provided each of us with a guide (a local photographer from the Shanghai Photographers Association) and a translator, to tackle the ambitious schedule that was layed out by the organizers.
Not only did we extensively criss cross the huge metropolis of Shanghai, but we also found out why it is probably going to be the next New York, why big tables should be round and that you can eat almost everything without any serious side effects.

Because of our glorious efforts it was of course inevitable, that the Chinese media tracked us down eventually with around 30 photographers and a couple of film teams.
A true “red carpet moment”. We made big news!


I especially thank my translator Zhuang Yadong (Mike), who not only switched between Shanghainese, Mandarin, German and English, to bridge the occaisonal linguistic and cultural difference, but was also patient enough to find me cool new suede shoes. Big thanks also to the organizers Chen Qiwei, Sun Weimin, Pengfei Li, Stephanie Tang, Lesley, Jiayi Zhu and my guide Hao Xiaohu.