The story sounds almost too absurd to be true: A lady of fine Victorian society supposedly fainted at the sight of an exposed ankle in 1866. Well, probably one of those contemporary exaggerations, but it tells us something fascinating about the power of cultural taboos.
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It's early May, and while most people are just starting to think about their summer holidays, I'm pretty much done with my 2027 calendar. Those dreary months had to be good for something.
500 likes for the new image, seventeen heart emojis in the comments and then — bam! — that one comment: "I don't think it's that good." Eight words that ruin the party. Does this sound familiar? I certainly know it all too well.
Sometimes you light a creative fire and burn your fingers in the process. Or in this case: your eyelashes.
I got it wrong for years. Light from the front, camera from the front, everything evenly lit. The result was just boring. No shadows, no depth, no character. At some point, the penny dropped: the problem wasn't the gear, it was where I'd put it.
Somewhere on my hard drive, there's a folder with the working title "Girls-and-Cars." The name is so obviously provisional that I chose it deliberately at the time, just to avoid committing too early. That was 2020. I was researching cars from the seventies, those angular characters with chrome bumpers and personality. And the eighties, whose designers had apparently decided that sharp edges were underrated. I was looking for locations, for owners who didn't just hide their treasures in garages but actually drove them.
It's unbelievable. I wanted to search for a model on Instagram with whom I'm planning a photo shoot. Her name — and here's the kicker — is actually Lolita. Complete with passport and everything. What happened next was so absurd that I could hardly believe it: Instagram blocked my search before I could even submit it.
I keep my eyes open. That sounds more obvious than it is, because most people look without really seeing. Fashion, music, art — it all drifts past, and at some point you start wondering whether you're still part of the picture or just watching from the sidelines. I try to be both, though when it comes to art, I make a point of only looking briefly. Long enough to take something away. Short enough to avoid mistaking someone else's ideas for my own.
A nude photographer who has watched GNTM since the very first season, barely missed an episode, and honestly quite enjoys the show. I understand if you need a moment. So do I.
I casually ask Thomas Berlin how his book project is going. The way you do when you haven't heard anything for six months and want to show polite interest. His answer: the freight company is coming today. The books are here.
Sometimes I forget how foolish people can be. Not in terms of intellectual inferiority, but in their spectacular ability to ignore the most obvious connections.
Recently, I stood in the Museum of Modern Art in front of a photograph by Thomas Demand. Office chairs, desks, papers — about as exciting as waiting at the registry office, I thought at first. My gaze was already wandering to the door and the promising museum shop beyond, when I read the description more out of a sense of duty than interest. And then it hit me like a bolt of lightning.
The other day, while reviewing my behind-the-scenes videos for Patreon, I noticed something that's been on my mind ever since. For the first time, I really saw myself at work. Not just the results, but me, actually photographing. And honestly, I was a bit shocked.
I prefer working with natural light. Always. Everywhere. It's my religion. But the weather? The weather is an atheist and couldn't care less about my faith.
Fuerteventura Airport. Among tired tourists and families with whining children, there she stands — freshly flown in from Barcelona, the new face for my island series. Tall, confident, with that look that instantly signals camera readiness. After the obligatory small talk during the drive, we move on to what's probably the most boring part for her, but the most revealing for me: our joint shopping trip.
It was a liberating feeling, I have to say. Deleted X and Facebook from my phone. Just gone. Those constant distractions that feel like a nervous tic you picked up somewhere along the way.
Do you still remember that feeling? Stumbling out of the cinema as a child, somehow dazed and intoxicated, with a head full of magical images and the unmistakable feeling of having just been in another world? I can still vividly recall how trips to the cinema in my childhood literally put me in a trance-like state. After the film, I always needed some time to return to reality.
Three years and seven months. That's how long it had been since my last portrait. I didn't count that myself; my photo software told me when I went looking for the image. And yes, I actually had to look.
I'd barely gotten back from Tenerife when the doorbell rang. And then again, immediately. The DHL driver was clearly not the patient type. Neither am I, to be fair, but I'd just survived a long-haul flight.
Every few months, there's this moment when I restock my art shop. I sit in front of my archive, scrolling through thousands of images, and it hits me again: a good photograph isn't automatically a good wall print.
A fascinating headline that hasn't let me go since I read about the Beatles. Imagine: a single day in the studio and the entire first album is completed. Pure intuition, pure feeling — and a result that made music history.
It's just past midnight and I'm sitting in bed with my MacBook. Sounds like one of those moments where you catch yourself thinking, doesn't it? The thing is, I'm not really the type for late-night brooding. But sometimes, it just has to come out. This vague feeling that the world is slipping through my fingers. As if someone set the playback speed to 1.5x while I'm still trying to keep up at normal speed.
International editions of Vogue and Elle were piled on my desk. For hours, I studied the photo spreads, searching for the secret of their fascination. What makes these photos so magnetic, so irresistibly alive?
Sometimes you buy a watch because it looks like a James Bond gadget from the eighties. Black plastic, lots of tiny buttons, mysterious symbols on the display — and then that one function that makes you giggle like a twelve-year-old: tide prediction. After a trip to El Cotillo, I know: It's about two hours off, but for a rough overview, it's perfectly fine.
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