I grew up in the Wetterau, just far enough from Frankfurt that I couldn’t easily drive into the city center. At least not in the nineties and certainly not without their own means of transportation.
But this changed with the driving license and the first own car, an Opel Kadett Kombi. Parallel to my training as a photographer, I began to visit the clubs of Frankfurt. Whether das Exzess, das Omen, die Batschkapp, or other clubs in Darmstadt, Wiesbaden and soon after in the whole republic. The days of boredom were now numbered and through photography I began to document the concerts I attended. Of course, I didn’t have a press pass, so I kept sneaking my camera into the clubs to take pictures.
I had already got to know photography at school in a photo club and was now willing to photograph everything that interested me.
The first photo book I bought back then was – how could it be otherwise – a book by music photographer Steve Gullick. I had gone to Cologne for a concert and found the book in a small shop there. All of a sudden, a whole new world opened up to me. It was no longer just the portraits and passport photos of the photo studio I worked at, but photography in magazines and advertising and the world became a little more interesting.
After my apprenticeship I studied design at the university in Darmstadt. In our main studies our professor Kris Scholz always showed us books by photographers on a certain topic. And the world got a little bigger. Now there were not only magazines or advertising, but real artists who photographed what they imagined, so completely without customers or picture editors.
Since my graduation I have been working as a people and portrait photographer for photo editors and advertising agencies, but I also continue to develop my own ideas and am always happy when I can realize a freelance work. A good friend of mine, Jens Koch, is passionate about Rammstein and has been invited to capture Rammstein’s tour photographically in 2019. When he described this experience to me, I knew this was a project I would also like to realize: to publish a book after being on tour with a band.
Steve Gullick – pop book number one
I found the book on the rummage table of a bookshop in the Ehrenstrasse in Cologne. I liked the cover, so colorful and full of off-color. When I opened the review copy I was disappointed at first, the photographs in the book are exclusively black and white, but when I saw which musicians Steve had already portrayed I had to buy it. Whether Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Bjork or a grandiose portrait of Jello Biafra. He had already photographed half my record shelf. To this day I love this book and always enjoy looking at it.
Philip-Lorca diCorcia –
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
A book I had been looking for for a while after my professor showed it to me once in class. I finally found it in a bookstore in Hamburg next to the Deichtorhallen. And how could it be otherwise, just before I went to a concert in the market hall. Philip-Lorca diCorcia was the first photographer, along with Gregory Crewdson, who managed to create works of art out of everyday situations. The first picture in the book is of a man standing in front of an open refrigerator, looking in perplexed. To this day I don’t know how many parts of this picture are staged, but it impresses me anew every time I see it. But also his portraits shot on the streets, whether accidental or staged, are for me every time like scenes from a non-existent movie, where I always start to think about what happened before and after that moment.
Jens Koch – Rammstein Europe Stadium Tour 2019
Not because Jens is a friend of mine, but because he manages to show in these photographs a band that has as much passion for their music as Jens has for his photography. He manages to show the personalities of the individual members in addition to the documentary angle. The cover alone is so strong that I’m willing to say there’s no better way to showcase the band. And this despite the fact that not a single face is visible. And then there’s a motif that always brings tears to my eyes. One of the musicians is carried across the crowd in an inflatable boat, waving a rainbow flag. At a concert in Poland. What a great gesture and so perfectly captured by Jens.
