The Beatsteaks

For the german daily »Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung« (FAZ) i spent one day with the german rock band »The Beatsteaks«. I was just heading to another job as the editor called me saying it was cancelled and i should portray the Beatsteaks instead. I had seen the band performing at the Hurricane festival a couple of years ago but i could neither remember how many of them stood on stage nor in which language they sang.

I thought of crazy, wild rock n‘ roll life. I pictured myself right in it.

The Beatsteaks didn’t fit in that cliche. Instead of Jack Daniels, loud music and hot groupies i found very clean tour buses, friends of the band members cooking delicious food and no liquor. The writer and i did an interview with Torsten Scholz, the bands bass player, a couple of hours before the gig. He was a very relaxed and sympathetic guy from berlin with some pretty colorful tattoos on his arms. After that the writer left and i stayed with the band until after the show. The only thing that fit into the rockstar life i expected was their manager taking care that the journalists wouldn’t harass the band members too much.
It has been a very interesting day.

New York Photo Awards: Lene wins the student category »Photographic Book«

Last night, at the award ceremony, photographers from around the world have been awarded with the »New York Photo Awards«, one winner and two honorable mentions in each of the seven general categories and five student categories.

I’m very happy to announce, that I am the winner of the student category »Photographic Book«. I applied with my book »Ewig treu«, which portrays the lifestyle of student fraternities in Germany.

The New York Photo Awards 2011 are part of the New York Photo Festival, which takes place in NYC right now (may 11th until 15th).

Top 10 emerging photographers from Germany

Florian Manz, Lene Münch and Julius Schrank are three of the TOP TEN UNTER 30 emerging photographers from Germany selected by »flare« magazine.

The jury consisted of the gallery owner Robert Morat, the art director Matthias Ballmann, the photographer Sebastian Bolesch and a Representative of the photoeditors of Spiegel Online. To see the other 7 photographers who have been selected click here.



Exhibition »Explaining man to man«

»When I first became interested in photography… my idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don’t give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself.« said Edward Steichen quite a while ago. Based on this credo of the famous photographer the photo exhibition at our University in Hanover got its title »explaining man to man«. The exhibition is meant as an anthology to report on the photo-journalistic work that originated here in the last ten years. Among the 63 works that are shown in the exhibition there are 5 reportages made by Kollektiv25-members.

Until April 8th 2011 the exhibition will be on display during the opening hours of the Design Center in Hanover.

The catalogue »Den Menschen den Menschen erklären« has been published by Rasch Verlag and can be ordered for 24 Euro, ISBN 978-3-89946-160-2.

Kollektiv25 joins Agency FOCUS

We’re happy to announce that all four of us have joined the german agency FOCUS. FOCUS has gained a lot of renommée for promoting photojournalism over the past 30 years and represents photographers such as Annie Leibovitz, David Burnett, Sebastião Salgado and agencies like Magnum and Contact Press in Germany.

We’re looking forward to a good cooperation and to make some pennies, too 😉
Our images are waiting to be licensed in the agency – go for it!


Photo- und Presseagentur FOCUS
Alter Fischmarkt 3
20457 Hamburg
GERMANY
www.agentur-focus.de
TEL +49 (0) 40 4502 23-0
FAX +49 (0) 40 4502 23-50

The Invented World – New pictures online

Quite a while ago I photographed this small essay about the »Tropical Islands« near Berlin. Let me tell you: this is the weirdest place I have ever been to. When you see the building for the first time, it seems as if an UFO has just landed in the middle of nowhere.
Initially the huge hall was built to build zeppelins, but due to financial reasons it failed in the year 2000. And shortly after that a malaysian investor bought it in order to bring the tropics to Germany.

On search for Orka-whales in northern Norway

A few weeks ago, I’ve been on assignment in northern Norway. Together with a writing college, we flew from Amsterdam via Oslo and Bodø to Narvik.Narvik is a small town, which can be seen as the getaway to the islands of the Lofoten. From here we boarded an old Fishing boat, and started our trip towards the islands.
The next days, we basically cruised around to find the Orkas, unfortunately without any success…!
We later found out, that we were not just unlucky…. Until a few years ago, huge numbers of Orkas were visiting the sheltered waters around the islands regularly to feed on there main pray, the Herring. At this time the chance to meet them was almost hundred percent.
But in the last decade, the commercial fishing industry targeted the Herring heavily. Within a few years the population around the Lofoten was almost exterminated, and with the overfishing and the disappearance of the Herring, the Orcas also didn’t come back.
»They are still there«, explains our captain, »Somewhere far out on the ocean, they are looking for Herring.«

For our story, this fact was a little challenging. A reportage about whale watching without seeing any whale, doesn’t appear very authentic! So my college changed the story a little bit and wrote about the facts of the disappearance of the whales as well as the flair on the old fishing boat and the pure beauty of the Lofoten at wintertime. I provided the photos.
Around two weeks ago the story was published as the opening-story for the weekly travel section of the Volkskrant.

It felt a bit like being in a flying military museum

I did it for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
The Airborne Early Warning and Control System (AWACS) under NATO command is supplying aerial surveillance to NATO Headquarters. It has a base at Geilenkirchen/North Rhine-Westphalia.

That’s what it said in my assignement. I was told to be at the base at 7 a.m. to accompany one of their surveillance flights. That’s how I ended up flying to sicily and return without even having touched the ground.

The planes they are using remain from the time when germans still believed in the »evil-russian«. They are also used for major events such as World Cups. The engines on the planes are not being used in civilian air transportation because they’re too noisy and burn too much kerosene.

It felt a bit like being in a flying military museum. The technology is able to spot 400 planes in a circumcircle of 350 km. Regardless of the weather and the nature of the ground, because the high flying ferret aircrafts can look behind mountains which radar devices on the ground can not.

AWACS is an early warning system but it can also be used for purposes of attack. Such a machine can guide pursuit planes and missiles and spot defense installations from a save distance. One plane costs about 110 million euros, at Geilenkirchen there are based 16 of them.

Meeting in Berlin!

It’s already a few days ago, but we still want to show you some photos of our meeting at the beginning of this month in Berlin.

On May first, we went to the big demonstration of right-wing extremists to cover the event. There were around 700 fascists trying to walk through Berlin, but got stopped after a few hundred meters by an enormous amount of counter-demonstrators blocking the streets.
At the demonstration we found ourselves between hundreds of photographers, journalists and film-teams. It felt as if there were at least two press-members
for every demonstrator. Anyways, it was nice being »on assignment« with the whole collective.

New story now online

Along the wall is a photographic essay about people living on and next to the ancient city wall in Istanbul. Lucas tried to capture situations only a few kilometers but seemingly a lot further away from the world famous beauties of Istanbul.

To see the whole story click here…

German photo-magazine refers to Kollektiv25

The german photo-magazine »Profifoto« reports on our collective. On page six of the newest issue you can find an introduction of our characters and you get an idea of our philosophy.

Next to that, we had some other online-publications in the last weeks. Here is a list with links, refering to photos and interviews of us.

Flare – Magazin für junge Fotografie
Augenblicke – Fotomagazin
Photo Presse – Online News
Urbanshit – Blog für StreetArt und urbane Kultur
fotoMagazin – Online Magazin

On Borrowed Time

Henrik Malmström, a photographer from Finland and friend of mine, just launched his first book in the beginning of march.

In 1999 his older sister Maija was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. At that time she was only 20 years old and the prognosis was not good. With the help of different treatments and a strong will she was able to extend and periodically enjoy her life. In 2007, when she was hospitalized again, Henrik started to document the following months, which were to be her last, for she passed away at home in April 2008. »Somehow I understood that these were the last moments and photographing was a natural way of being close to Maija.« says Henrik.

On borrowed time is a very personal photo essay, that focuses on intimate moments, the atmospheres and the sentiments that arise when facing death.

On Borrowed Time – Henrik Malmström
On Borrowed Time – Henrik Malmström
On Borrowed Time – Henrik Malmström
Henrik Malmström: On Borrowed Time – photography exhibition and book launch
Gallery Luova March 4th – March 31st 2010

Artist talk: Saturday March 27th at 2pm

Order a book.

We are Kollektiv25

After three and a half months of planning, long discussions, 16 hours of skype conferences and a snowy weekend in Hannover, it’s finally done: our website is online! Of course we are very curious about getting feedback, recommendations or critics. Feel free to leave a comment or contact us at mail (bei) kollektiv25 [punkt] de. If you’re interested in Kollektiv25, become our fan on facebook, follow us on twitter or stay updated about our newest projects via RSS Feed.

A very special thanks goes to Timo Höner who spent way too much of his precious time designing and programming everything for us! Timo, you did a great job!
Enjoy and spread the news!