Interior View

Overcrowded boats, crammed with men, women and children, floating on the Mediterranean. Streams of families, packed with the bare necessities, marching across the land. Emergency shelters, bursting at the seams, bare of privacy. Images we encounter via all channels, every day. They are important for recognising the full extent and tragedy of the refugee crisis. As emotional and disturbing as those kind of pictures are, they are also just as documentary. They originate from the point of view of the photographer or journalist. But every person setting off to leave their country to find a better future somewhere else has their own view of this journey. In December 2015, the Hamburger photographer Kevin McElvaneyhanded out 15 disposable cameras to refugees in Izmir, Lesbos, Athens and Idomeni. Half of those cameras returned filled with personal shots and deliver a unique document from inside the flight. They tell stories of deprivation and danger. But there are also portraits of laughing children, snapshots of families, unpretentious every day situations, attempts at normality. And at the same time snapshots from a parallel life, that often uncover their tragedy at a second glance. The ethnographical photographs are flanked by pictures from established photographers and videographers, such as Sinawi Medine. The Eritrean photographer came to Europe via the Mediterranean route himself and documented the work of the civil organisation SOS MEDITERRANEE, which has been able to save over a thousand people from the ocean with their rescue missions. All proceeds from the exhibition will go to this tireless organisation. The vernissage is taking place at 6 pm on Friday, June 10th. Go!
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#RefugeeCameras | Spreewerkstätten, Am Krögel 2, 10179 Berlin |  June 11th and 12th, 12 – 6 pm | Vernissage:  June 10th at 6 pm | Facebook

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Kategorien: Events | Autor: | Datum: 09. Juni 2016 | Tags: , , Keine Kommentare

Paul Aiden Perry

 

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Paul Aiden Perry

The 2 minutes-interview

 

Paul Aidan Perry isn’t Paul Aidan Perry’s real name – it’s somehow different and only partially, or was it the other way round? Anyway, Paul is what’s hot right now in photography. We would even go as far as stating that he is one of our absolutely favourite photographers. Why?  He works with contemporary looks without hiding behind them. He delivers on point and then some. His images are about content, about discovery – he even manages to smuggle a small story into an editorial series. We got to know him in action, so to speak. He visited us in the studio and at home for BLONDE Magazine, camera in tow. If you’re interested in seeing how we live, you can see the whole story here. We had so much fun with him that we invited him and his girlfriend/muse Anna to stay for dinner. We can justifiably state that Paul is the vegetarian with the kinkiest preferences on this entire planet. Or what is your take on the Fry-Kebab – a kebab filled with nothing but french fries and garlic sauce? You just gotta love that. Oh, and in just one week we’ll be getting on a boat with him to shoot a campaign for a fabulous new client. But that’s all we’ll tell for now…

 

Name: Paul Aidan Perry
Age: 29
Location: Berlin
Job: Photographer & Retoucher
Shoe size: 47,5 bis 48,5
Favourite food: anything with potatoes
Contact: hello@paulaidanperry.com / paulaidanperry.com

What is your definition of beauty?
Function, straightforwardness and certainly perfection. Perfection is a wonderful repository of imperfection, by the way.

 

Who or what inspires you?
Unplanned moments  – there is no better source of inspiration.

 

Are you better at getting things started or finishing things?
I’m usually the all-in-or-nothing type – most of the time. I hate prototypes and always try to think of everything the first time round. That occasionally causes just a slight delay…

 

What makes a good picture?
There are two different approaches that impress me. Extremely reduced images or the precise moment.  Usually photo reportages find their way to me though.

 

Digital or analogue?
Whatever suits the moment best! I like both.

 

Why are you a photographer?
Do you want the sexy or the honest version?

 

Your biggest success so far?
To always keep questioning and optimizing my own work. So far so good.

 

What aren’t you good at all?
– Waiting a second
– Lying on the beach and doing nothing
– Sitting still
There is definitely a pattern…

 

What would you like to accomplish?
Always keep moving to change my perspective. Anything else is a bonus.

 

The strangest/funniest/craziest moment of your career?
A car smashed my brand-new camera, while I was trying to save a little kitten that was trapped in a window. I got to keep the kitten afterwards.

Share a magical place!
We have a tiny little room where we keep everything in black boxes, which are labelled just like at an archaeologic dig. The question is not whether I have it, but where.

 

Do you hang up your own photographs at home?
Yes, they were on special offer.

 

Can you sing?
I bought a guitar the other day.

 

Which personality would you like to portray?
All dictators in one single picture – like a class photo.

 

Which piece of art would you like to call your own?
I’d like to have a white marble gravestone.

 

What would you cook for us if we visited you at home?
Something with potatoes. You might be able to detect a pattern here…

 

What are you afraid of?
That changes everyday. In general, I don’t like rough surfaces. Textured paper is okay, I guess.

 

What super power would you like to have?
Being able to fly.

 

What should no one know about you?
Nobody should know that.

 

Which question should we have asked?
Why were you on the cover of a teenage magazine at the age of fifteen?

 

Last Words:
Too often, they are melodramatic. I love chocolate.

 

Kategorien: People | Autor: | Datum: 08. Oktober 2015 | Tags: , , Keine Kommentare

OHO!

OHO!

In recent years, hardly any artistic genre has evolved as much as photography. The boundaries between reality and illusion are as blurred as ever, icons come and go within a blink of an eye, and minor changes in history are lost in the endless stream of pictures. The intense process of artistic exploration often only starts after creating the image – in front of the computer, on a smartphone or within community consensus. But what actually defines a good picture? What distinguishes a good picture from one that is excellent? Having smartphone with an abundance of filters doesn’t necessarily make you a good photographer. Photography is a skill that requires inspiration, intuition, experience and the determination to share your point of view on the world – without being governed by the daily rhythm of blog rolls. Like every form of art, photography is about revealing a piece of yourself. Something that is so easily hidden behind foodporn, duck face and I-have-the-prefect-life selfies. That is essential the difference. Over the past years, the Ostkreuzschule has turned into talent factory spawning the best young photographers in Berlin. Ostkreuz-students are highly regarded worldwide. They have everything mentioned above. During their training, they have mastered their skills setting no limits to their artistic creation. They were able to make experiences and – above all –they were encouraged to find their own ways of expression. Starting October 10th, the graduate class will be presenting their work in a two-week exhibition at HO Berlin. Ostkreuz + HO = OHO. Oho! The vernissage will take place this Friday starting 7pm (free admission). More events such as a book launch and a panel discussion are to follow throughout the exhibition. See oho-oks.de for the full program. Go and get inspired. We need more pictures!
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OHO – Ausstellung der Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie | 10.-24.10., Mon-Fri 12-10 pm, Sat+Sun 12-9 pm, Vernissage 09.10., 7 pm | Holzmarktstraße 66, 10179 Berlin | oho-oks.de | Facebook Eventlink

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Kategorien: Events | Autor: | Datum: 08. Oktober 2015 | Tags: , , , , Keine Kommentare

Arne & Claudia

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Arne & Claudia

The 2 Minute Interview

Together with her partner Arne, Claudia Hirschberger runs the food and photography blog Food with a View. Last year, they even won two awards because they are so good at it. Arne is a vegan and Claudia is a vegetarian (a mixed double so to speak). That makes cooking pretty easy, but can be a bit challenging when baking. Photographs and food. AND photographs of food. We like! By the way: recently the two popped over to Thomas at Leogant. Rumor has it, they’re planning something to do with water and recipes… We’ll keep you posted! Here’s what else we found out about them.

 

Name: Arne Schmidt / Claudia Hirschberger
Age: 50 / 45
City: Berlin Mitte
Job: Freelancer
Shoe size: 44,5 / 42
Favourite restaurant: Mogg & Melzer | Osmans Schwestern, Herr Rossi…
Contact: foodviewberlin.com

What was the last thing you ate?
A: Homemade Bircher muesli with vanilla and fresh berries for breakfast.
C: Muesli. We hardly ever eat it, but today we felt like it. Usually I have a green smoothie first thing in the morning. That really wakes me up.

 

Do you have an idol?
A: You can learn a lot from other people. But they don’t necessarily need to be idols; people are so diverse and have different features.
C: A culinary idol? No, but other people are very inspiring. Friends, family, authors of cookbooks and other bloggers, of course.

 

Who is your favourite photographer and why?
A: Most recently Sebastião Salgado, whose work is currently on show at C/O Berlin, impressed me.
C: Ansel Adams was the first photographer I really took notice of. When I was sixteen, I saw some of his landscape portraits at an exhibition in London. They were electrifying, especially those of Yosemite Park.

 

Sweet or savoury?
A: I like both and in combination together. Especially sweet fruit like dates in spicy oriental dishes.
C: I like the combination of the two as well – we often cook like that. If I had to choose between the two, I probably couldn’t. One of everything, please! ;-).

 

What does your place look like?
A: Classic, minimalistic and rather bright. I keep my original vintage racing bike in the apartment. It’s a nice eye catcher next to the sofa.
C: A little bit of inherited mid-century furniture, a few design classics and some Ikea. My large linoleum table is definitely my favourite piece of furniture, because it seats so many people. And I love flower bouquets, those with lots of little tiny blossoms and grasses.

 

You can’t sleep at night and go to the fridge. What do you fancy?
A: I don’t take anything from the fridge; instead I take a banana from the fruit bowl. I love bananas!
C: A glass of water and a date. And if it’s really bad, I’ll have some warm milk and honey. That always helps.

 

What can’t you live without?
A: Definitely coffee. I don’t have to drink it all day, but I cannot replace it with a smoothie like Claudia. And before bedtime, coffee actually makes me sleepy. A phenomenon.
C: Not a single Sunday goes by without eating cake.

Something you’re really not good at?
A: I can’t peel potatoes. I just end up peeling them to death. I’m absolutely useless.
C: Ball games of all kind.

 

The best thing you’ve ever had to eat…
A: …might have been the berry compote my grandmother used to make. I wish I could have it again.
C: …were Rösti with a fried egg after a hike in the mountains that had lasted much longer than planned – with a lot less food supplies than necessary. The simple and traditional food at the mountain hut afterwards was great.

 

If you could change the world overnight, where would you start?
A: Making good food even more popular. With all the buzz about this topic, it’s still obvious that lots of people don’t know how to prepare simple and good meals and aren’t aware what effect it might have on their health.
C: Since I’ve just been dealing with the subject: provide clean drinking water for all human beings.

 

With which famous person would you like to have coffee?
A: Klaus Kinski.
C: René Redzipi, one of the founders of New Nordic Cuisine.

 

What would you cook for us if we visited you at home?
A: If we’re both cooking, something without any animal products. It’s fun creating meals that don’t immediately appear to be vegan. Definitely no tofu-schnitzel or anything like that.
C: On a hot summer’s day: green pea gazpacho with lavender and a raspberry sorbet in a walnut cornet.

 

What are you afraid of?
A: I’m not a particularly anxious person. But I’m afraid of the same things most people are afraid of: war, poverty, and diseases. Things like that.
C: I’m afraid of spiders and getting caught in a thunderstorm. And that we might never make the perfect vegan sponge mixture ;-).

 

What should no one know about you?
A: Sometimes I dream about Swiss cheese. It’s my dark side…
C: Store-bought pizza, once a year.

 

Which question should we have asked?
A: How do a vegan and a vegetarian live and cook together?
C: What is your favourite recipe and photograph at the moment?

 

Last Words:
C: …I’ll leave those to Arne.
A: Oh, how nice.

 

Kategorien: People | Autor: | Datum: 29. Juli 2015 | Tags: , , , , , Keine Kommentare

The salt of our souls

The salt of our souls

„I have lost faith in us.“ A statement made by the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. It is the interim conclusion of his now 71 year long life, determined by the search for the origin of love – face-to-face with terror – and marked by deep disappointment regarding human nature. By „us“ he means our species, the human being as such. Salgado has documented and stylized the suffering of civilisation like no other. His work lives from immediacy – in order to get his images, Salgado exposed himself to the dangers of crisis areas for months. After witnessing and documenting the horrors of the Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsis in 1994, Salgado suffered a breakdown. Being confronted with death and brutality, his body decided it had had enough and started fighting back. Ten years later Salgado resumed his travels – in small propeller-driven aircrafts, on foot, by boat, in a folding kayak and a captive balloon he set out to places not yet known to civilization. For eight years he worked on his project „Genesis“, photographing archaic volcanic landscapes, arctic ice masses, meandering river canyons, mountain chains enveloped in mist, primordial rainforests and endless sand dunes and documenting the stunning beauty and rich diversity of unspoiled natural landscapes, as well as indigene peoples in opulent black-and-white photographs. This piece of work holds 250 photographs; the gigantic exhibition officially opens this Friday at the C/O Berlin and will be displayed until August 16th, 2015. On Saturday, the C/O is also hosting a special event at the Delphi Filmpalast: There will be a screening of the impressive documentary „The Salt of the Earth“, in which Wim Wenders and Salgado’s son Juliano give insight on the photographer’s creative work. Afterwards, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, will be talking to Sebastião Salgado about the relationship between mankind and nature. The word genesis is Greek and means as much as beginning or birth of something new. It describes the creation of the world in a biblical sense. Perhaps Salgado is trying to bring us back to the perfection and purity of beginnings from which we have led ourselves astray and make an appeal to preserve part of the planet in all its original and fascinating diversity. Perhaps his images of harmoniously flowing rivers and peaceful beings have helped him create his own version of a perfect world – stylized, black-and-white and immaculate. He does at least reduce man to a background actor, not being worth more or less than any other creature on the planet. That thought pleases us: humbleness and the natural belief of our place in a divine structure lie in it. Salgado has not lost faith. On the contrary, his work reveals tireless drive and incurable love.
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Sebastião Salgado – Genesis | 18.04.-16.08. | C/O Berlin, Hardenbergstraße 22–24, 10623 Berlin | Vernissage: 17.04., 19 Uhr | co-berlin.org/sebastiao-salgado | Lecture 18.04., 12 Uhr im Delphi Filmpalast | Facebook Eventlink | Credit: Sebastião Salgado, Ecuador 2004

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Kategorien: Events | Autor: | Datum: 15. April 2015 | Tags: , , , , Keine Kommentare