Rückblende 2010 – Award for political photography

One of my portraits of the German politician Hans-Christian Ströbele (Green Party) that I shot for the Danish Newspaper »Information« has been nominated for the Award »Rückblende 2010« and is now being exhibited in different Cities around Germany and Belgium:

Berlin, Landesvertretung Rheinland-Pfalz, Jan 21st until Feb 20th 2011
Bonn, Haus der Geschichte der BRD
, March 2nd until April 3rd 2011


Mainz, SWR-Funkhaus, April 13th until May 13th 2011


Brüssel, Vertretung des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz, 
May 19th 2011


Trier, Kurfürstliches Palais der ADD, 
June 1st until June 17th 2011


Leipzig, Zeitgeschichtliches Forum Leipzig
, July 7th until Aug 28th 2011


Koblenz, Struktur- und Genehmigungsdirektion
, Sept 14th until Oct 21st 2011

The catalog can be ordered here.

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.

How to kill a horse

A while ago I got the assignment to photograph at a slaughterhouse for horses. In fact there are too many private held horses in the Netherlands, so people are trying to sell them on the Internet. This, in many cases doesn’t work because there is just no need for these high number of animals. Especially when the horses suffer from something that impacts there function as a sport horse in a negative manner.

I photographed at a slaughterhouse before, but I was still excited when I got on this assignment. Anyhow there is a difference between seeing a pig rather than a horse dieing. It is probably because today a horse is nothing more than a pet for us. There is no longer any economical need for dobbins or working horses like a 100 years ago. Next to that horses do not get reared to feed the human race like pigs or cattle do.

But I also think, if you eat meat, you should be aware of where it is coming from. At least we should keep in mind, that the in plastic wrapped peace of meat in the supermarket was an animal before.

Anyways, I spend some hours photographing the slaughters following their work. This is how it looks:

Halloween 2010 NYC

Two weeks ago Halloween took place in NYC. I spent some time roaming the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn capturing scenes going on in the city. People go pretty mad in this Event but it’s something quite enjoyable.

Florian in Frankfurt

I’ve started my internship at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) one of the biggest daily newspapers in Germany. Till march of 2011 I’ll be working for them.
My first thrilling publication was a computerized trashcan :-).

FotoDoks 2010 – Festival for documentary photography

Last night I just returned from a 5-day-trip to Munich, where I exhibited my work The secret world of fraternities at the documentary photofestival FotoDoks 2010. Beside the familiar athmosphere and all the great people that I met and the phantastic photos that were shown in the former Hertie-Store »Puerto-Giesing«, one of the highlights for me was the meeting with Anders Petersen.

All in all it was a very intense and inspiring time for me. Chapeau to the initiators Robert Pupeter, Hans Herbig, Jörg Koopmann and Armin Smailovic and congratulation to this year’s winner Gordon Welters.

www.fotodoks.de










The two photos of Anders Petersens lecture in courtesy of Andreas Müller.

Julius is now associated with the Dutch newspaper »De Volkskrant«

Julius just moved to Amsterdam to start his job for the daily Dutch newspaper »De Volkskrant«. The paper, which is one of the biggest in the country, distinguishes itself through a high standard of photo-quality.
From now on Julius will be working for at least 6 month as an affiliated photographer for the paper.

You can reach him on his German phone as usual or on his new Dutch number:
German: +49.151.15 54 77 47
Dutch: +31.685.10 02 72

bread ’n butter II

Here is another job, I did for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: Just recently I shot the former Miss Barbie of Germany (from ten years ago). Well I didn’t even know such a title existed but there I am in the flat of this women in Wiesbaden. She had to redo her make up a couple of times because she felt uncomfortable and was afraid she might look bad in the pictures. She put a lot of effort into the way she looks (including plastic surgery which had gone a little bit wrong on some parts of her body). She appeared to me as a rather sad personality still trying to make money out of her succes from the past. It wasn’t easy to photograph her because she’d just look into the camera the whole time trying to do these sort of society event smiles. After about one and a half hours I left her place and these are the results… well let me know what you think.






Zmâla

Kollektiv25 is featured in the newest issue of Zmâla-Magazine, which is an independant review dedicated to the production of collectives of photographers in France and abroad. Next to Kollektiv25 twenty-three other collectives are presented in this second issue of Zmâla, which was launched last week in Perpignan at Visa pour l’Image. Further booklaunches will take place in Paris, Lyon and Brussels in October and November.

For more information check out www.zmala.net

Zmâla – L’œuil curieux
ISBN: 978-2-9534557-1-7
The normal price is 19 €, but you can order it from us for 15 € in case you want one!

bread ’n butter

This shall be the beginning of a little series of blog entries I’m gonna make from here on. I decided to post some of the little jobs I’m currently doing for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). It’s bread ’n butter in a way but not necessarily boring. You get to know quite some people from time to time.

Last week I photographed Thilo Sarrazin for Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. The man was the number one news topic in Germany last week. He published a book in which one of his most provocative thesis‘ is that migrants of muslim descent would have a genentic pool limiting their intelligence. And since they have a higher birth rate would be a threat to the intelligence of the entire german population. This is scientifically proven wrong but getting him a lot of attention from the german media. The man is certainly very smart and I personally think that most of his provocation is nothing but a very clever media campaign. His book is already sold out in some parts of germany. So he is making a lot of money out of the whole thing.
The meeting took place in a small café in Frankfurt. The writer and Thilo Sarrazin sat in the dark back corner of the room with mr. Sarrazin facing the wall. I was promised about 20 minutes for the shooting but after about ten he called his driver to pick him up. He seemed to be very tired after the week he had had. At the time his political party was trying to kick him out and a few days later he also lost his job as a member of the executive board of the german Bundesbank. His face remained expressionless in almost every shot.

Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan

Kathmandu – City of Kings and Ewig treu have been chosen for a group exhibition, that shows a retrospective of 10 years of photojournalism of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hanover.
Just last night, the opening of the exhibition took place at La Salle des Libertés in Perpignan. Among many guests, there were also the mayors of Hanover Stephan Weil and of Perpignan Jean-Marc Pujol.
The exhibition, which is part of the »Visa Off« programme of the »Visa pour l’Image« in Perpignan, will be open until September 4th in La Salle des Libertés, Rue Edmont Bartissol 3, Perpignan, France. Opening hours: 10 am to 6 pm daily. Just drop by in case you are in Perpignan.

Photo by Philipp von Dithfurth

TV story on german channel NDR

It’s been a little while since the german channel NDR did a story on me and my story »The last remaining farmer of Hanover«. It is still available here (sorry, the link is not available anymore). The good thing is that you get to see a little bit of Hermann Völxen in action.

Exhibition of Lucas‘ Kathmandu story in Neuenkirchen

My story Kathmandu – City of Kings is gonna be exhibited at Springhornhof in Neuenkirchen. After the story won the VGH-Fotopreis 2009, this is the 4th time it’s exhibited in rather small towns. Previous shows took place in towns like Wedemark and Osterode. Whoever feels like having a small trip to the countryside is warmly welcome to the Vernissage on the 24th of august 18:00. I’m sure drinks and snacks will be provided 😉

»Ewig treu« at FotoDoks 2010

The work »Ewig treu« by Lene Münch will be exhibited at the documentary photofestival FotoDoks 2010 from October 14th to 17th in Munich.
For the last two years FotoDoks was part of the filmfestival »nonfiktionle«, but this year it will be independent for the first time.
The exhibition will show eleven different approaches to the theme »inner worlds«. Next to that a lecture with Anders Petersen and panel discussions about documentary photography will take place.
Lene will be at the festival and is looking forward to meeting a lot of people over there!

Save the date:
FotoDoks 2010, October 14th to 17th, Puerto Giesing in Munich
www.fotodoks.de

Florian and Julius just finished their assignment for »GEO Saison«

A couple of days ago, Florian and Julius came back from their assignment for the German travel-magazine »GEO Saison«.
They’ve spent around 9 days photographing in southern France.

»We definitely had a good time down there, eventhough the metier of travel-photography was very new to us. Usually as a photojournalist you are focused on things that doesn’t work too well in our society. Most likely you are telling stories of problems, issues and difficulties.
So sometimes it was strange for us to always look out for the beautiful things around us. But we are very satisfied with the result and we definitely acquired a taste for the metier of travel-photography!«

The photos will most likely be published in the February issue next year.

Catalogue of the 2nd Lumix-Festival

We are happy, that we were part of the exhibitions at the 2nd Lumix-Festival for young photojournalism in Hanover. For those who couldn’t come to Hannover to see the exhibitions, or for those who were there and would like to have a souvenir to remember all the great works, there are good news: A catalogue with extracts of each reportage, that has been exhibited + all information about the photographers has been published.

In case you missed to buy one at the Festival, you can now get the catalogue for 20 Euros at the Bookshop in the House of Photography in the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg or you can order it via email: bookshop@deichtorhallen.de

The countdown of the »2nd Lumix festival for young fotojournalism« is on!

Next week on Wednesday the 16th, the »2nd Lumix festival for young photojournalism« will start in Hanover!
Today the official festival newspaper was released. The cover of the 14 000 copies shows a portrait of Hermann Völxen, the protagonist of Florians story »The last remaining farmer in Hanover« which will be exhibited at the festival.

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.

Lumix Festival for Young Phojournalism

Three members of Kollektiv25 are nominated for the FreeLens-Award 2010.
The nominated reportages will be exhibited at the Lumix – Festival for Young Photojournalism in Hanover, Germany from june 16th to 20th 2010.

Florian Manz with »The last remaining farmer in Hanover«
Lucas Wahl with »Kathmandu – City of Kings«
Lene Münch with »The Secret World of Fraternities«

Website of the Lumix – Festival for young photojournalism
Or watch the trailer.

»The last remaining farmer in Hanover« by Florian Manz
»Kathmandu – City of Kings« by Lucas Wahl
»The secret world of Fraternities« by Lene Münch

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.

Lucas publishes story on romanian gypsies in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung


In the beginning of january I travelled to Romania for the german newspaper »Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung«. My collegue Phillip Eppelsheim and I went there to cover another story, but we got a couple of extra days to look around. Maramures, the region where we have been, borders the Ukraine and is one of the poorest and most remote places in the EU. In the city of Viseu de Sus we found gipsy families collecting plastic bottles and metal at the cities dump. We were surprised to see that, because we didn’t know that this poverty is still existing in Europe. We spent two days with these people on the dump. Toxic gas was flowing in the air and one sank knee deep into the garbage. The gypsies get five euro cent per kilo of plastic bottles so they generate an income of about three euros per day. The harassment of gipsies is a common issue in Eastern Europe. The people working on the dump don’t get paid welfare even though they’re entitled to it and most of their children don’t go to school for long. People working on the dump don’t become that old. Almost everybody has liver problems from breathing toxic gases and the chances that one injures himself by grasping into glas, or even worse, injection needles from a nearby hospital, are pretty high.

It’s a bad situation that’s going on down there and it shouldn’t exist in the EU.

Fyens Stiftstidende

I just did an assignment for the danish newspaper Fyens Stiftstidende. The picture editor of this danish newspaper was my second examiner during my bachelor exam in Århus and remembered me, when he was looking for a photojournalist in Germany who could do the job.

The story was about Lars from Denmark, who came to Germany to get a special cancer treatment, that is not administered in his own country. The immune therapy in combination with the Local Hyperthermia is his last hope, but the doctor said, that »he was probably coming too late«. But Lars, who already overcame another tumor, just before the new one was diagnosted, is a strong personality, who doesn’t stop to fight for his life.

The story about Lars, was published on january 24th in the sunday supplement »Fokus« of the daily newspaper Fyens Stiftstidende.

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!