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Tomorrow, 7pm: if you should be in or around Vienna, don’t miss the opening of Seconds2Real’s group show at Anzenberger Gallery. It’s the first time that I’m involved in an exhibition in Austria. I’m looking forward to a few days in Vienna meeting lots of nice people, celebrating the opening party for the 2ed Fascination Street exhibition and hopefully finding some good moments while photographing in the city. While I had some of my newer pictures in the Berlin edition of Fascination Street last autumn, the Vienna show will include some of my ALEX series from 2008-2010.

Btw: ORF published a nice article about Street Photography and Seconds2Real yesterday (German only).

Seconds2Real’s exhibition “Fascination Street” will have its next stop in Vienna. As it is my first exhibition in Austria, I am going to show parts of my series and book ALEX from 2008-2010. All details here.

As a part of the Indie Photobook Library, my book ALEX is on exhibition at the New York Photo Festival this weekend like it was at the snap! Festival in Orlando, Florida last weekend. So if you should be around Dumbo…

Found this thread in a forum while googleing myself the other day. It’s interesting to read discussions like that about your own work and YES it should never be the intention to be everybody’s darling ;-)

Image from my book ALEX.

I feel honoured that Seconds2Real asked me to join their co-operative. We have some exciting plans for 2011 – a common book release about Street Photography in Austria and Germany as well as exhibitions in Vienna and in Berlin.

Check the Seconds2Real website for an ALEX selection with some pictures from the book that haven’t been published on the web so far. My other gallery on the Seconds2Real websites features photographs from Urban B’Sides and new photographs taken in Berlin this year.

…and of course be shure to check all those other fine galleries by my new buddies.

Seconds2Real published a nice review about ALEX last week – now they are running an ALEX competition. Click here to find out how you can win a copy of ALEX. If you shouldn’t be lucky to win one you still have the chance to order one ;-)

Had a great opening party last night at refugium 2 with a few hundred people visiting the neunplus exhibition Mittelpunkt der Welt. My ALEX book was delivered just in time – so: it is OUT NOW!

4th European Month of Photography in Berlin
Mittelpunkt der Welt [Center of the World]
neunplus at galerie weißer elefant / refugium 2

The exhibition presents photographs of Nikolaus Brade, Piero Chiussi, Lina Gruen, Fred Hüning, Klaus Muenzner, Christian Reister and Mirjam Siefert.

Opening + Release of my book ALEX : 16.10.2010, 19 h
Duration of the exhibition: 17.10. – 13.11.2010
Opening times: Di-Sa 13-19 h
Location: neunplus in der galerie weißer elefant / refugium 2
Auguststraße 21 (2ed floor) / 10117 Berlin / T 0049 30 28884454

More information on the neunplus website and the 4th European Month of Photography in Berlin website.

The incubator of ALEX. Printed today. Will the finishing be done until Oct, 16th? 99,99% YES. Book presentation will be at the opening of the exhibition MITTELPUNKT DER WELT. Part of the 4th European Month of Photography in Berlin.

The editing is finished, the layout is complete, the text is written and translated and I did the very final art work this morning. So I brought all print data for the book to Hannes Wanderer today. Hannes Wanderer is a photographer, a publisher, a book shop owner and also cares for the print productions of a print shop near Hannover where ALEX will be printed.

It was important for me to have a photo book specialist producing the book that I can ask questions about all concerns of making a book and preventing me from doing silly things that wouldn’t work in a printed format. A big advantage over any internet printing service about the choosen print shop is that there is no limit concerning sizes and papers. So you can basically do what you want. My book will be 24cm wide and 14cm high which isn’t a regular size on any „out of the box“ printing service. It will have an offset printed hardcover and stitched binding. And I will stand right next to the printing machine when the first paper comes out. Except for the cover, the book will be printed digitally at high state of the art quality. The release date should be Oct. 16th along with the opening of the Mittelpunkt Der Welt-Exhibtion at refugium II in Auguststraße, Berlin.

No man is an island and it’s good to have some „experts“ involved in the production of a book. I think every photographer knows that it can become very difficult judging your own work if you work on a project over and over again.

I’m happy that Falk Schreiber, a journalist from Hamburg who wrote a decent article about the project a year ago will write the introduction. I think he really understood what ALEX is all about and finds better words for it than me. Writing the introduction to my own photobook myself turned out to be an odd idea.

Concerning layout, selection of the photographs and sequencing them my friend and former photography teacher Andreas Rost brought in some really important impulses. The original format and layout is history now and I’m very grateful that he pushed the book to some stronger level. Hope we can finish the editing during the next week.

This image shows an early dummy version of the book – title rejected, format rejected – this is NOT how the book will look like.

Next steps will be defining the right paper, getting the files in the right data format and so on. And I’m happy to have another expert for that. Will tell you later…

The first pictures of my ALEX series were taken in the summer of 2008. I had just bought a new camera at Alexanderplatz and took my first few test shots there. Alexanderplatz isn’t far from where I live, so I went there from time to time in my lunch break – always with my new small camera with a 24mm wideangle lens. A few weeks later while looking at the pictures I had taken there, I realised that this might be an exciting project to keep working on. In the years before I had been travelling a lot – mainly to big cities of the western word until I finally had the first compilation of my Urban B’Sides together which were shown in some exhibitions in 2008. So this would be a nice contrast – instead of taking pictures around the globe I would just walk to the same place over and over again to see what was happening there. Alexanderplatz – Berliners simply call the place „Alex“ – is a very lively and busy square with lots of different kinds of people – it’s a microcosmos in its own right in the central district „Mitte“ of Berlin. And a perfect stage for my photographs.

After half a year I was offered the possibility to show a first interim conclusion of my ALEX series at Monochrom, Berlin. The reactions were surprising – the range of feedback I got, went from „Absolutely Bullshit“ to „Brilliant – your best work ever“. So this was a real motivation for me to keep going on with that project. If it provokes such different feelings it would be a good idea to go a bit further.

I always thought that the right way to present those images would be in a book. By the end of last year I produced a first dummy. This worked out quite well, but still not good enough. The printing wasn’t really striking and the editing was not yet distinct enough. I went on taking pictures at Alexanderplatz and after thinking about how to produce and how to publish the book this summer, the decision was made to produce it in time for a release in autumn this year when ALEX will be part of a group show during The 4th European Month of Photography in Berlin.

Writing a decent preface seems to be as difficult as editing the pictures perfectly. This is the stage that the book is now at. I think I’ll write a view posts about the development of it here on blog61 – so this will tell a story about the pleasure but also the problems in producing my first photo book.

www.public-life.org is a street photography website and blog run by Robert Engelhardt, Berlin. 15 photographers from around the globe are presenting their portfolios. A very interesting section of public life is the media section combining video documentations about William Eggleston, Elliott Erwitt, William Klein, Martin Parr, Garry Winogrand, Bruce Gilden and other heroes of the genre. Another fine section ist the Features Section in which you can find an early selection of my ALEX series.

Berlin 2009, from the ALEX series.