Achim Katzberg
Allemagne
At some point, Achim Katzberg's photography began in his childhood ... because he had a cassette film camera at a very early age. But it really started when, thanks to the confirmation money, a SLR camera fell into his hands. And since then this passion has never really stopped. Although he originally took a different path professionally, since 2010 photography has been a second job alongside a job at a well-known German bank. The photographic training was mainly self-taught. Whereby good contacts and some workshops always keep the eternal cycle of learning going. And of course the orientation towards role models or rather the look into many books: Elliot Erwitt (is even imitated with his famous dog series), André Kertesz, Vivian Maier ... but also colleagues like Siegfried Hansen, who some years before developed a book with Wolfgang Zurborn, as Achim Katzberg did this year.
In addition to freelance work such as street photography, the portfolio also includes many other genres of photography: architecture, travel photography, company portraits and event reports. A fine thread running through the different works is a great common ground. Achim Katzberg composes his motifs very precisely into his image formats. The division of areas and lines are extremely strict. His pictures are often stage views ... partly with - partly without people. Apart from his reportage work, one could say that he is a graphic artist among photographers. But more about that in the following project report about the book 'Big City Life'.
Galery
His Project: ›Big City Life‹
The dream of flying is something deeply rooted for mankind - and for photographers there is the eternal dream of their own book. This seems to be genetically determined. Although both are now attainable; it's just not as easy as riding a bicycle and writing letters. Even if the photo book producers want us to believe that 1-2-3 can create a book. One should not be blinded by the supposedly professional appearance: The art is still in the planning, in the choice of the sequence of pictures, the narrative combination of two pictures on a double page. And then there are the graphic details: layout and typography. So books are to a large extent about inner values.
At the beginning of his book idea, Achim Katzberg had in mind a review of his free works of the past years. He collected hundreds of pictures from his archive and discussed his project with colleagues. Like Wolfgang Zurborn from Cologne, for example, who has a lot of experience in editing books. By sharing his pictures and his project with others, the author of the pictures already changed his point of view. The idea of a retrospective would only have been interesting for the small group of connoisseurs of Achim Katzberg's work. But that's usually too short a thought for books. The photographer began distilling his selection in such a way that a concentrated selection uncovered a core, thus giving the book a universal theme: The city as an ultra-modern stage setting, man as an isolated being. This theme can certainly be seen as a look at an attitude to life. The protagonists in the hustle and bustle of urban geometry appear like fugitives and peripheral phenomena in a space hostile to life. In the highly aestheticized environment of banking districts, harbor cities, and overdesigned museum quarters, which surround us as a representation of modern life, people appear like a memory of an architect's dream: Look here ... it was created for you. But these supposed inhabitants seem to long for somewhere else and are at least in their thoughts somewhere else. Because they do not belong here. They are sorry to disturb ... 'we hurry to leave the picture so as not to destroy the perfection'. The places do not connect with the people and the people do not connect with the places.
But the photographer has waited patiently for exactly this disrupter to appear? _ that's how the picture should be. In the end, is it also his own attitude towards life? As with most good films (... and artist's books), we are naturally deprived of a happy end and questions remain open. But besides an admiration for beauty, there is a deep malaise slumbering there. And even the smart uniformed 'Maintenance Manager' in the last picture leaves the stage resigned with shovel and dustpan and has no desire to remove the invisible traces of human life ...
