Info

Posts from the Portraits Category

Choose another category?

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.

 

 

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

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.

The Cover Story of this weeks “Stern” magazine took me to the greenhouse of Hamburg’s botanical garden. “The Biology of Love” is yet another take on the human inclination towards infidelity. The lush foliage helped me to hide the faces of the unfaithful.
(The ones who show themselves are happily married.)

The consumption of a Singha beer with Rene, the author of the hotel story, brought about the last of my Bangkok stories (for now). We both had some time left in “the big mango” and, talking about all the interesting people we’d met, decided to show some of the cool stuff they do, to a German audience.
It’s time to get used to fact, that Bangkok is not only about ‘go go bars’ and pirated dvd’s these days. There is some true and original creativity out there, and it’s exiting and colourful.
The story was published in “Maxi” magazine.

The decision to use my visa to full capacity and extend my stay in Bangkok until mid March, brought me another two jobs and a lot more fun. For the magazine “Capital” I visited three very stylish boutique hotels and their owners. It made me wonder why most people still prefer to stay at hotel chains.

Towards the end of 2010, the design agency “ringzwei” commissioned me to contribute a couple of pictures to the annual report of Europe’s biggest broadcaster of radio and television, RTL. Instead of going through the usual process of casting people first, I combined photographing people I met on the street with people that were recommended to me, as a safety precaution.

In January 2010 I left Hamburg, to spend a year in Thailands capital Bangkok.
Apart from expecting to get a decent sun tan and several mosquito bites, there wasn’t really a meaningful plan behind this venture into the unknown. I wasn’t too worried about getting a few assignements from magazines back home, in order to pay for my curries. Shortly after my arrival though, a political crisis hit the capital and Thailands image as an easy going Southeast Asian paradise took another dent. As a result, my potential clients looked elsewhere for untroubled travel destinations.
Before the city went up in smoke though, my girlfriend, travel companion, and liaison officer Gabriele, managed to sell an idea to the corporate magazine “à la carte” of household appliance maker “Miele”. She had read an interview with the well known food stylist Suthipong Suriya, aka Karb, in a Bangkokian paper. We found him to be not only a passionate lover of thai food, but also an expert on where to go for the best of it, how to cook it and of course, how to make it look extra-yummy.
I ended up not only taking the pictures, but for lack of an author, wrote my first editorial “piece” as well.

The new issue of “Greenpeace Magazin” looks into the present and future of German energy supplies. A journey through the length of the country, took me to some of the visionary people who contribute to the final shutdown of Germany’s nuclear powerstations.

 

In the same issue there is my reportage on the mismanagement of Indonesias
“Komodo National Park”, and it’s most prominent resident – the Komodo Dragon.

More information
Order the magazine

 

After not having used my darkroom for the last two years, I have finally decided to get rid of it altogether. Checking the prices for used enlargers on Ebay tells me, that the stuff won’t even pay for a decent meal anymore.
Next to the processor is a shelf full of old prints, which also needs a bit of trimming down. Today I started looking at a couple of boxes, and amongst photos that make me blush, I’ve retrieved a few old pearls, that will pop up in this blog every now and then. This one was taken on a college trip to Cherbourg, France in 1990.

 

 

My first logbook entry marks a very sad occasion.
On Saturday, April 2 my soulmate Marc died in Berlin. He would have turned 41 today. The last time we spoke we talked about his new book ‘Hobalala’, how happy he was that he had finished it in time, and that we would meet up soon for his birthday.

Hard to believe that there will be no more mutual adventures, like the one last year, where we raced through Hanoi on dodgy motorbikes.

I miss him terribly. He made me laugh and drove me mad. Farewell old sport.

For my book “Toast Hawaii” he wrote a short story, which you can read here:

 

(weiterlesen …)