Peter Nitsch was born in the Upper Palatinate in Eastern Bavaria and spent his childhood there. First he studied communication design at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. After several years as a designer, he began working as a freelance photographer.
Influenced by his no-man’s-land childhood in the Upper Palatinate and the German skater scene of the late 1980s, Nitsch’s visual narratives are about people in dialogue with life. Be it individual or collective identities, which are revealed through a clear and concise representation in photography – he uses the social context and the (urban) landscape to explore the signature of the human being in relation to cultural and intercultural realities.
Nitsch published his first monograph Bangkok – Urban Identities in 2006. His latest monograph, Tango in the Big Mango, has just been published by Hatje Cantz. He has received numerous awards, both as a designer and photographer. He co-founded Europe’s first crossover skate and snowboard magazine Playboard and the corporate design studio RUPA.
In 2020, he was appointed a member of the Royal Photographic Society of Thailand.
Fordlândia9 by JM Ramírez-Suassi
JM Ramírez-Suassi and I met through Instagram. As it happens, you’re surfing along and the algorithm spits out a suggestion on the screen that might suit you – in this case, it was right. A little later we got in touch and stayed in touch. When his book Fordlândia9 came out, I was very taken with the structure of the book and the interworld mood of the photographs. Fordlândia9 is a photo book in search of Henry Ford’s Utopia. The U.S. automaker wanted to make inexpensive car tires in the 1920s. Due to mismanagement and technical advancements in rubber tire manufacturing, the project in the Amazon rainforest became a multi-million dollar sinkhole. Although Fordlândia is often called a ghost town, more than 1000 inhabitants still live there today. Fordlândia’s view is well documented and JM Ramírez-Suassi was not interested in a classical photo documentation, but in the idea of Utopia, not in the place – he set out to recall and capture the lost myth in photographic memory. One of my all-time favorite books, which I always enjoy picking up and flipping through. Chapeau!
Retroperspektiv by Lars Tunbjörk
Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjörk died on April 8, 2015. He was on his way from his home in Södermalm in Stockholm to visit a friend at a downtown cafe when his heart gave out. He was a photographer who worked on the mundanity of everyday life in a warm but often tragicomic way. His images surreally amplified the most absurd aspects of modern life, using the harsh light of flash photography that became his trademark. For him the camera was a protection, but at the same time a tool to get in contact with people and also to learn something about himself in a certain way. Tunbjörk also used photography to talk about the darker parts of his own life. In his project Vinter, he photographed his own struggle from the empty, dark elevator shaft-like depths of a depression he suffered after a heart attack. His pictures are very multi-faceted and, in retroperspective, paint a picture of a modest, but image-aware photographer who knew how to tell stories and also how to process them. The book is, for me, one of the most beautiful tributes to life and photography.
The White Sky by Mimi Plumb
I became aware of the book The White Sky by Mimi Plumb in 2020 when I began researching photographs of California suburbs. This preserved period document in black and white, spanning 1972-78, is a view of the suburb of Walnut Creek at the foot of Mount Diablo. When the series about suburban teens was created, Mimi Plumb herself was in her early twenties. An unagitated but powerful collection of authentic moments from an “embedded twen” photographer who herself not only photographed the shots, but experienced them. Period.
