Interview with Harald Falckenberg (Quicktime-Video)

The private collector

Collecting is a passion or according to Freud a compensational act – to be traced back to the detachment of a child from ist mother. And when the time of cuddly toys is over the grown up child can collect stamps or in the best case art. A private person collecting art, for which reason ever, has a big advantage over an institutional collector. The private collector can follow his intuition, trust his gut feeling. He doesn´t owe an explanation even if he decides to purchase subversive art: obscene, pornographic, violent – mind you - in an artistic context.

The collections of private art lovers are often more thrilling and versatile than the collections of some bank corporations or companies which certainly would not have discovered Jonathan Meese. Although courageous buyers are not always able to estimate quality, they are an extraordinary important part of the artmarket.

Keith Haring. Untitled (Nuclear Sex Series). 1981.

Harald Falckenberg, lawyer and private collector, lives in Hamburg. In his 6000 sqm exhibition space and warehouse there are genuine treasures of modern and postmodern art. Joseph Beuys, Keith Haring, Gerhard Richter, Nam June Paik, Martin Kippenberger, Jonathan Meese are just a selection of the artists whose art works are owned by Falckenberg. At 50 he started to collect and he is certainly not going to stop it anymore.

The infantil artist Weiterlesen… »

Interview with Carla van de Puttelaar (Quicktime-Video) 

A new star on the sky: we have met the photographer Carla van de Puttelaar in Amsterdam. Her passion are women and beauty; or rather the beauty of women. Her models are not for the cover of the high gloss magazines for they are not perfect. Their “stain” is what Carla van de Puttelaar defines as beauty: a very human beauty. A beauty with dignity.

Carla van de Puttelaar. Untitled. 2006. C-print. Weiterlesen… »

Interview with Will McBride (Quicktime-Video)

Will McBride is one of the big painting photographers, or better photographing painters. Frankly, he donates his life to art, and create grand pictures.

In 2004 his photographic lifework was honored with the famous price “Dr.-Erich-Salomon-Preis” of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh).

“Show me”

Cover of “Show me”. German edition. 1973.

The church spoked of his sex-educational book “Show me” as “work of the devil” and tried to ban it from getting published. It tells a story of sexuality which detecs nakedness as a taboo in our so called tolerant society. It tries to find a new approach to a sex education book for children. The punchline of the book Will McBride tells us in our interview.

Because of changed moral views his book “Show me” - similar to Jock Sturges and Sally Mann - is being fight against. Meanwhile the book is banned in the US, in Germany all attempts of conservative groups failed to censor or ban it from publishing. The Bundesprüfstelle (German Agency for the Examination of Media for Young People) has so far rejected the ban.

Will McBride works with a mission: He wants to free man from his sexual immaturity. In restraint sexuality of man he assumes the basic evil of our society.

The end of the world. Will McBride. 1970.

Romy Schneider by Will McBride. Weiterlesen… »

Jock Sturges. Montalivet. France.

Official Filmwebsite: LINE OF BEAUTY AND GRACE  *  A documentary about Jock Sturges

A virulent, aggressive minority has decided that Americans don’t know themselves what it is they should see, and need to be protected by people who are wiser than they are, even if they are only a tiny sliver of the population.
Jock Sturges

All my life I’ve taken photographs of people who Weiterlesen… »