Mamali Shafahi:
Could you introduce yourself?
Florian Hetz:
I’m a German artist working with photography and I live in Berlin.
MS:
Tell me a bit about your professional background:
FH:
I started my professional career in theatre, first as a costume designer, then as a producer, eventually I started to work for a TV production company.
MS:
Was that the time you lost your memory?
FH:
Exactly. I developed a nerve infection that mostly comes from stress. It’s painful but very easily treatable. In my case though it went through the brain blood barrier, which is the natural barrier that protects our brain. This lead to an encephalitis, which is an inflammation of the whole brain with a mortality rate of up to 40%. Luckily i got diagnosed early and went straight to the hospital. I was blissfully clueless about how serious the whole situation was and I didn’t realise that I was losing my memory. When I was about to get discharged from the hospital, the professor came to me and said ‘You have two options now: Option one, you continue your life how it was and I’m going to see you again. Not in a week, not in a month, not in a year, but you’ll be back. Option two is take responsibility for yourself and change your work/life balance.” I quit my career after leaving the hospital and started from scratch, and went from a life where everything was planned to a life where everything was open. I had to learn how to deal with free time. Sounds simple, but took me a bit. In that time I found out that my brain was more damaged than I thought. Not only the short term memory was affected, but also chunks of my long term memory. To this day I don’t really know what is gone, certain things are just not there anymore. It is a good lesson in letting go: things come and things go. And realising that I dont need much for a happy life was another valuable lesson. As long as i could pay my rent, and food i was fine. So I ended up working two nights a week in a popular club in Berlin to pay for my life.
MS:
And how did photography get into your life?
FH:
After i left the hospital, i started to take photos in order to remember. I used the camera as a kind of diary. Instead of storing a memory on paper, i stored it on a hard drive as a photo. I started to carry a small point and shoot canon with me, taking photos of people, details and situations. They helped me to remember what happened. And a couple weeks or even a year later I could trace back parts of a something, that would have been lost without the photos.
MS:
How did you make the transition from taking photos for yourself to working with photography as an artistic medium?
FH:
In 2015 tumblr when was still relevant and i used it to repost other peoples photos. But at one point I posted one my photos.A very simple, very beautifully composed photo. It went viral in a short time. I shrugged that off, but posted a few weeks later another one. The same thing happened and then with the third one as well. That was the point were i realised that the way i translate life into photography resonated with others.
Working so exposed in nightlife had made me protective of my private life and I didnt want my personal photos to be online. That was the point were i decided to buy a better camera, a simple light and to create photos, based on the imagery in my head.
In the beginning my photos were playing a lot with the idea of memory and fiction. The early closeups came directly from the idea that most LGBT people have memories of hidden desires. If you grow up not straight you cannot act on your desires, and you know instinctively that it could be dangerous for you. You are not allowed to openly look at someone you desire. Most of us have memories of moments, where we secretly looked at a crush.
Like the moment a kid is seeing a drop of sweat running down the armpit of the best friend of their brother after a football match. Seeing that did something to them. They had no idea what was going. But they knew they couldn’t look too long otherwise it could become dangerous for them. I was interested in these moments. I collected anecdotes from others and translated them into my language. I wanted to create Madeleine moments of desire and give us all the permission to look closely.
Beginning of 2016 was the starting point of my artistic practice. The photos from the years before were all still in the diary format. In July i had my first exhibition and in October 2016 my first book came out in. I got some recognition internationally, but I was also a bit overwhelmed by all of it. I quit my job at the club, took the time to learn the craft, and tried to develop my own language in that medium. In 2020 my second book ‘ZWEI’ came out, and it felt like the perfect representation of where i was as an artist.
MS:
And where are you now today, if you compare it to the moment you started taking photos and had the issues with your brain and memory. To what extent do the themes you started out with, like the fragility of the body, inform your current work, because we can still see it in your photos, this tactility, is that the direction you want to continue with, sustaining the awareness of these themes in your audience?
FH:
I think those themes will always be part of the DNA of my work. The way i look at a body is not much different to the way i look at the deformed metal of a car wreck. But for me the interesting part is the way that my practice changed. I started in a controlled studio setting and before I even picked up the camera, I knew exactly what I wanted to shoot. I had a sketch book full with what i wanted to create. That way i learned the craft. But when I started spending more time in Los Angeles I didn’t want to continue the work i was doing in Berlin.
MS:
When was that?
FH:
At the end of 2018, beginning of 2019, I went to LA for three months for an artist residency. And with the abundance of the southern Californian light, it would have been weird not to use it. I changed two small things during those three months: I only allowed myself to work with given light. No extra light source that i could manipulate. And the other thing was that I didn’t allow myself to know the outcome of a shooting. I would meet people, spend time with them, and would take a photo whenever I saw something that would interest me, instead of directing them. Taking photos became about seeing the right moment. Wherever I am, I look at things through an imaginary camera. I collect information in form of photos and create something with it. This is where I’m at at the moment.
MS:
When I go through your stories, like you came from theatre and then you started to work in Berlin nightlife, and then you start to take these photos and connect it to memory. I’m wondering what changed [in your practice today, how would you categorise what inspires you in your practice at the moment considering all the stages you’ve been through in your life?]
FH:
It feels like I am in an intermediate stage. I am moving away from the body as subject. Most likely i won’t become a nature or a street photographer, but right now all of that plays a part in my current work. In the future I want to take more time for geographically based research projects, focusing on one area rather than keeping it very broad. In the last three years I’ve been mapping my life again more, and it nearly feels like i got back to a more diary based work.
MS:
And this moment when you started to take photos, that was to bring back memories, but was it also the idea of missing a creative process in your life, which was part of your life before, that you had to stop, did the nightlife experience inspire your work or was it not inspiring at all?
FH:
Nightlife was actually more off-putting. Dealing with people in their worst possible state made me not wanting to engage with them in my private life. And i was never interested in documenting nightlife. Once I quit working at the club, I never looked back, it’s part of my past and I don’t regret it but it’s not something that defined me much.
Berlin is a very liberal city and i enjoy that. But it also a place where trashiness and dilettantism is extremely celebrated. I think my work is a counter reaction to that.
MS:
Talking about lighting and texture in your work, when I was going through your photos I found the texture interesting, and its of course related to lighting as well, where is the idea of the importance of the light coming from?
FH:
Hollywood studio photography of the 30s and 40s. A lot of my ideas of light come from studio photographers like George Hurrell or Clarence Sinclair Bull. But also the works of Penn, Avedon, Horst P. Horst, Hujar and Mapplethorpe. All of them created something very distinctive. They shot in black and white though and I have no clue where my colour scheme comes from. That was always there. I am very particular with my colours. For me there are two parts to photography: The first is to take the photo, and the camera stores information of that moment. The other part happens in the dark or light-room, (the digital equivalent to the darkroom), where you decide how you recreate the moment: You set the colours, the contrast of that moment when you develop the film or file. My idea of the moment, of the colour is absolute subjective. And i remember something differently depending on how much time has past, how much has happened in between.
MS:
How do you choose your elements, like when I go through your photos obviously bodies are the main subject, but sometimes you have flowers, toys, accessories, also the way you choose landscapes. Are these things you decide in advance, do you see an arrangement in your mind, or is it just [spontaneous]?
FH:
I prefer not to decide in advance. Photography for me is about seeing. Walking through life with open eyes. I’ve always looked closely at the world. And wherever I go, I am scanning rooms, I am scanning streets, I am scanning people. Often there is something that I’m interested in. I want to be drawn in. I´ve always been curious and i hope i never lose that way of looking at life.
MS:
Are there elements that sometimes come back by themselves? What is the importance of them?
FH:
Sometimes i think that there is no story or personal connection attached to them. And then one day i realise that there is, and that there is a relevance or meaning for me. I’m not really ready to unpack all of them though. The longer I take photos, the clearer it gets which elements keep showing up, and I’m interested to see how this is going to develop in the next 10, 15 years. Which of them will stay with me?
MS:
One element that could be very important, when talking about bodies and the feminine, there’s no photos of feminine bodies…
FH: No
MS:
...as you said, is it on purpose or?
FH:
I haven’t included many women in my work because I didn’t thought I had anything unique to add to the way a man looks at a woman, and I didnt want to add to the canon of the exploitation of the female as an object. The few words I could have added to that discourse were not really relevant. On the other hand, in terms of the man as object, it felt like there hasn’t been enough said. There’s still space for exploration, and that’s what I’m interested in. I’m not opposed to shooting women though.
MS:
If we go to the title of the show, ‘unusual experiences’, it’s derived from one of your photos, but more than this, for me, there is a lot about what is unusual; gay life, and all these sexual practices which we saw in Mapplethorpe as a reference, in the history of photography, and then we had Tillmans after in a different way. Do you feel any responsibility about that, to show your personal approach to it?
FH:
The interesting thing about the title is that what is unusual for someone is very normal to me. The photos of the show have no shock value to me. They are part of my life, of my way of seeing, and when i take them i dont spend a thought about how others see them.
I expect straight people to be able to look at them. They dont have to like them, but they have be able to look at them. The same way that I had to look at straight sexuality from an early age on. It needs to be possible that a straight man can look at another mans penis without feeling uncomfortable, feeling gay, or feeling judged. This is the baseline: if I can look at your world, you can look at mine. And we don’t have to feel attracted to each others world, but we can neutrally look at what it is without immediately shutting the door. For me, taking photos of sexuality is part of life, it is not for titillating reasons, it’s not about creating shock value. It’s part of my life, as much as my morning coffee. I think it’s important that our lives are as equally represented as straight lives. That’s why in the beginning, I was very clear that the sexuality in my work had the same value as, for example, a photo of a flower. One isn't more important than the other, and ideally they complement each other. If you look at the photos that deal with sexuality, you can see that there is a nearly classical approach in the way they’re composed, how they’re lit, you can recognise the art historical tradition. I want people to be able to look beyond the sexuality and go a little bit further, a little bit deeper into what is there besides the obvious.
MS:
You said your models, after a while, became kind of your subject, more so than just being models right?
FH:
I find the word model always difficult, I prefer the word sitter.
MS:
But my question is: [with] the whole lifestyle that you’re seeing in [your work]; are you seeing your role as a photographer or as an artist as illustrating this world, like what you see and what part you have in it, or is there also a message, conclusion or judgement you have? How do you perceive your role as an artist?
FH:
I think because i started out in a situation where I took the diary photos to help myself, that this approach is still there: I am my main audience. The photos are there to help me navigating though my life. I’m creating a universe that sometimes confuses me, but in the end makes sense to me. And with that I find answers to other peoples questions, but that’s never the starting point, that’s an add-on. I’m very insisting in visibility and on taking space, instead of asking or waiting for someone to give me space. I don’t need permission.
MS:
Last question, is there anything missing in your explanation of the process of shooting people? There’s kind of a mystery, even for me, I wanted to be shot to see how the process was.
FH:
Generally I work with people that contact me. I don’t ever want to convince anyone into taking photos. That needs to come from them. I prefer to work with people that I know. But if I dont know them, i want to meet them in a cafe or for a walk, a couple of days before the shoot. I want to get to know them a bit. I’m happy that many people want to work with me and I learned early on that there’s always something in a person that I’m interested in, there’s always something I’m fascinated by and that I find beautiful.
'unusual experiences' – a solo by Florian Hetz, curated by Mamali Shafahi
