PHOTOS

UNIQUES

• ELEPHANTS

  
  

  For a time one could read the slogan ‘what a pity concrete doesn’t burn!’ all over the place. In response the German concrete lobby started an advertising campaign that spectacularly showed the advantages of this material. The campaign stated “Let’s hope it’s concrete!’, and so this theme fits very well. This image is now widely known as an icon in the world of advertising photography.

  The scenes were photographed in a studio in London, with the help of model maker Jerry Judah. The set for the photo shoot existed of three elements: the bridge, the elephants and the cliffs. The cliffs were carved from polystyrene blocks and were then covered with mortar and pigment powder. All in all the set was 5m wide and 3m high.

  Four elephants were created and from those casts. They were all given different trunks and ears which made them all individual. The background is a landscape shot from Hawaii.

  During the work I received a fax from the client: I should make a technical drawing of the bridge, as they wanted to check the structural dimensions! I was not at all prepared for this - I was just making an image for advertising. We drew the plan for the bridge, and see, the bridge really did work! That didn’t really surprise me, as I had adopted the design from an actual bridge ...

  

• PRECIPICE

  

• HYDROJET

  
  

  I created this image for the EXPO exhibition in Hannover. It was my task to produce an interpretation of the hydrogen-powered jet technology, but in a humorous way.

  The biggest problem was gaining permission to photograph an airplane on the runway. We were going to photograph the aircraft in the afternoon, but it only arrived at around 10pm when it was pitch dark. I could hardly see the aircraft so how on earth could I have taken a picture of it? My assistant, Kristina then came to the rescue with a great idea: we asked the airport fire brigade for illumination with their lighting trucks. That was the most uncomplicated and reasonable answer to my lighting dilemma!

  The water bottle caddy is not real, it is a small model. The tyres are, incidentally, toothpaste tube tops!

  

• ARTEC MOLLUSQUE

  

• CAR EXPLOSION

  

• MOTORWAY JUNCTIO

  

• BALLOON SHIP

  

• BERLIN 2100

  

• CALLCENTER

  

• CHICAGO FLOOD

  

• COMPUTER BUG

  

• HARLEY JET

  

• DUNLOP GOBLINS

  

• ICE CITY

  

• FIRE SPITTER

  

• FIAT DUCATO 2

  

• FIAT DUCATO

  

• GIRAFFE

  

• GODZILLA

  

• HAMSTER PILOTS

  
  

  I created a small photographic series entitled ‘The True Life of the Small Animals’. Could it be that some animals take nightly sightseeing flights? Why not? Such themes work on a very simple basis: transfer human mannerisms onto the small animals and use the same materials familiar in the animal kingdom

  In such an image one always needs a couple of congenial elements. The rat is not, for example, a typically likable figure, but the cap made of an acorn as a hat helps here enormously, doesn’t it? And the figuration of the “tower” with the lamp and the wind gauge follow the same principle as does the hamster with walnut helmet in the aircraft that is built with feathers.

  The hamsters were stuffed creatures from a natural history museum, the rat was live.

  It is especially important for me to make everything as realistic as possible. I considered this for quite a while: does the aircraft look as if it would function? How does one ensure that the hamsters look alive, with a positive charm about them? Such things develop as one photographs and works on the images. One needs not only years of experience but also the distinctive nature of a child - just as I do.

  

• LECTURE HALL

  
  

  The editor of GEO contracted me to create an image on the theme of ‘coaching’, it was to have a humorous touch about it. I suggested not to show a real-life situation, but to use symbolic animals: sheep as the listeners in a lecture hall, but I could not find suitable sheep in the vicinity, and so, we had to improvise without delay.

  For this we used cheap ceiling panels with an imprint of a wooden structure that can be found in any home improvement store. They were put together in a quarter of a circle, photographed and mirrored. Voilà - a lecture hall was created! It wasn’t quite so easy to find the sheep, they needed to be white and clean! A farmer kept his sheep on a pasture with no mud for an entire week, and so they remained clean. We photographed the sheep in a barn. For this we had to raise each sheep individually to a height of 3m, this we did with a forklift truck.

  It was a most unfamiliar sensation for the sheep to suddenly be riding an elevator! The completed image consists of some 50 single pictures.

  

• ANTS NEST

  

• INFORMATIONSFLOOD

  

• BUGS BAR

  

• HANDBAG LIGHTEN

  

• METRONOMES

  

• MICROCHIPS

  

• MÖNCHE

  

• NORWAY SHUTTLE CITY

  

• RADIO

  

• SPACE SHIPS

  

• RICEFIELD

  

• RENAULT SILK

  

• ROBINSON

  

• RUSSIAN SPACESHIP

  
  

  I wanted to create a photo that would tease space travel a little. One knows astronauts as high-tech workaholics who never smoke and drink. What would the opposite look like? The spacecraft truly exists, it isn’t a model. It is however, a discarded helicopter that I once photographed in a marines museum in New York which I then transformed in post production into a spacecraft.

  My brother Markus, my permanent assistant, acted as the astronaut. This image was my own project, this is why I did not have the budget to hire a space suit. We simply replaced this with a painter and decorator’s paper overall which we stuffed with foam. The background was provided by NASA. And the fire flash? From my archive of course!

  

• HOVERING ISLAND

  

• SEAHORSE

  

• SOAPROAD

  

• MIRROR LANDSCAPE

  

• STARLIGHT EXPRESS

  

• ROAD ROLLER

  

• STRESS DOUBLE

  

• STRESS PRODUCTION LINE

  

• STRESS LIFT

  

• STRESS CHIEF

  

• SUPER HARVESTER

  

• ISLAND OF DEATH

  
  

  I love the work of Arnold Böcklin (1821–1901), and especially that of the famous ‘Toteninsel ‘(Isle of the Dead), of which he painted five versions. This is the third from 1883. One hundred years ago this was hugely popular in Germany. I too wished to stage this scene! I love to turn things around and change the meaning. If Böcklings Toteninsel is a burial chamber, I will search for something to the contrary: what could be more opposite than a children’s carousel and someone selling balloons?

  

  At first we built the island in much the same way as the original. My brother Markus worked on this for nine days in order to achieve the model of the cliffs as accurately and as beautiful as possible. As I could not find cedars as in the painting, I photographed poplar trees and ‘cedared’ them by picture processing. It was most difficult to find a carousel. I searched for a very long time until I found a small, pleasant, steam-powered carousel that I ‘re-built’ through extensive post-production.

  

  In the painting, there is a boat travelling towards the isle. This, of course, I also had to refer to. In my picture, Markus moves towards us as a page boy with balloons in his hands. That wasn’t a problem, but where, oh where, does one find such a wooden boat in this day and age? I stumbled across one by coincidence: in a souvenir shop such small model boats were on sale, and so this is one of those!

  

  A problem with the picture montage was the reflection of the scene in the water. For this, I found a very simple solution: I placed a glass plate, like the ones you find in every refrigerator, with a wavy surface, in front of the monitor. When one photographs the reflection of the monitor in the glass panel, one has the perfect image!

  I worked on this image for six weeks.

  Often Böcklin’s work is seen as the symbol of the German soul - pensive, melancholy, even the ‘longing for death’ of the German spirit is immortalised. And so it is most fitting to see which hobby painter purchased this work in 1933 - Adolf Hitler. No joke!

• VW BERLINALE GLADIATOR

  

• VW BERLINALE SALOON

  

• WASP NEST

  

• WOLVES POSTMAN

  

• WUESTENSCHIFF DESERTSHIP

  

• RULER FIELD

  

OLYMPIA

The most extravagant photo story of all time for the magazine STERN - top German athletes as heroes of the ancient world.

• APOLLO

  
  

  I created the biggest photo story in the history for the magazine STERN - staging top German athletes as 'Heroes of Olympus', creating the scenes just as complex Hollywood productions are designed. The image shows the decathlon athlete Dennis Leyckes, who as Apollo, slays the monstrous serpent Python.

  The giant serpent is a model of a snake with a width of about 1m, built by model maker Nils Carstensen who made all the models for this production. The impact point of the spear was created in a pretty disgusting way: on a trampoline we made a mixture of conserved mushrooms, ketchup and Zigeunersosse (a German green and red pepper sauce), when one hit this from below the ‘brain mass’ splattered everywhere, absolutely everywhere ....

  

• EURYDIKE

  

• FURIES

  
  

  This image is also from the STERN Olympia Series. The furies are considered to be the police troupe of the Gods. Our furies are the volleyball players from the national team that I photographed in the Olympic Center in Heidelberg. I did not wish to show the gruesome punishments of the furies against their human victims - this is why I created a scenario showing the torching of buildings.

  For this I needed to show historical Greek architecture. As the antique structures are heavily in decay I photographed a modern building of classical architecture in Athens. The two temples in the picture are the same building that has been shot from different perspectives. The flames are from my archive, in which I have thousands of images of flames. This photograph is a picture montage of 30 single pictures.

  

• HEPHAISTOS

  

• IKARUS

  

• JASON

  

• LEDA

  

• ODYSSEUS

  

• SISYPHUS

  

• THESEUS

  

SMOKE

Smoke-Plume. These picture show cigarette smoke. 100,000 shots were necessary in order to capture 20 good images.

• SMOKE 45

  

• SMOKE 150

  

• SMOKE 151

  

• SMOKE 167

  

• SMOKE 176

  

• SMOKE 657

  

• SMOKE 1814

  

• SMOKE 1816

  

• SMOKE 1821

  

• SMOKE 1824

  

• SMOKE 1866

  

• SMOKE 1906

  

• SMOKE 1909

  

• SMOKE 2094

  

• SMOKE II