WHEN I TEACH, I LEARN
I have been teaching at various universities, schools and institutes for over a decade. The focus of my teaching activities is cross-genre in the fields of fashion photography, magazine design and fashion in general. Here you will find excerpts of magazines, publications and projects that were completed with the students and professors over the years.
All images are photographed by me in cooperation with professors, students and helping hands. The photos taken by other photographers are credited accordingly.
Don’t take it for granted – That’s why I would like to thank my colleagues and all the students for their invaluable inspiration. In particular, I would like to thank the professors Ursula Zillig, Dorothea Mink, Andrea Rauschenbusch, Annette Geiger / University of the Arts Bremen and Anke Schloeder / University of Applied Sciences Berlin for their trust and support. Unfortunately, I cannot list all the people who participated in the projects. Nevertheless, i would like to take this opportunity to thank all those creative brains.
2023 : Falling out of the World
University of Applied Sciences Berlin
The magazine of the HTW Berlin Fashion Department. The fifth edition of the publication shows outstanding work by fashion design students and how they deal with the relevant issues of our time in their designs.
Strick Dich
University of the Arts Bremen
These images are the result of a perfect interaction between different genres. Fashion design, graphic design and photography come together within this project. The knitted slipovers the students created in a workshop play with the identities of the protagonists.
Voll schön
University of the Arts Bremen
The general opinion is that art students are very spoiled and that conditions at german universities are heavenly. I contradict that with a poster campaign which I realized on my own. It shows the true status quo.
Hochschultage
University of the Arts Bremen
It is becoming increasingly important to make the work of art and design students public in order to give creativity and new visions a platform.
Breathe
University of the Arts Bremen
It all begins with an idea. Actually, I only wanted to photograph the fashion designed by students of professors Ursula Zillig, Dorothea Mink and Kai Lehmann in order to archive their extraordinary creations, but then the first book was initiated and designed by professor Andrea Rauschenbusch as a printed document and marked the beginning of a series of publications.
Breathe | Volume 1
An Idea about Fashion
Volume one stands for the signature, unconventional style fostered at the University of the Arts Bremen. Over 100 images show the people wearing the outfits at a moment of exhalation and reveal them to be awake, lively and highly present. A brief, focussed moment show casts the possibilities of a fashion embracing fluidity as a working principle.
Breathe | Volume 2
Love between Harbour and Battlefield
Ambivalences and disruptions become visible in these outfits and their photographic stagings. Opposites are being firmly set: waste and the new, things fragile and strong, digital printing and silkscreen, black and white vs. colourful, sports and war, the romantic scenery of harbours and a battlefield, nostalgia and modern industry, the personal and global politics, the intimate and the public, the puerile and the mature, the artificial and the natural, comforts and inconveniences, clothes that fit individual bodies and those that force their form unto them. In their interplay, these dualisms become a productive paradox.
Breathe | Volume 3
Forever old, forever bold, forever versatile
Volume three continues its exploratory approach, again showing new collections that coalesce and combine in surprising ways. While we continue to build on the potentials of new combinations and collaboration, we decided to showcase models that do not conform to the still existing norms of the industry. Instead, employees, students, faculty and friends of the University of the Arts will be united with visitors to become actors in a photo shooting – forever old, forever bold, forever versatile.
Breathe | Volume 4
Venice Bremen – Common Summer
German wanderlust is embodied – and at the same time parodied – by poses and outfits. In this manner all contradictions present in the scenery at the beach are being quoted and squandered: Mass tourism pushes far beyond any reasonable limit, endangering the very existence of Venice. The photoshoot takes these issues into account not only by the staging of the images but also by the pieces shown. All of the collections have been fashioned out of recycled materials and products. A black and white documentary of Kim Marie Heintzen is added to the publication.
Breathe | Volume 5
Weam keasch Du nochad?
Volume five is really something special for me, as this time 14 students visited me in the Bavarian alps for a week and did the shootings for BREATHE in the beautiful nature of the Allgäu. I did a tableaux with black and white portraits as Bavarian stereotypes of the talented young artists and the professors and gave the photographers support in advance and on site. Photographers: Lara Rau, Max Grund.
Every generation has a new way of living and feeling.
Every generation has a new way of living and feeling.
Das matschige Auge der Mumie
University of the Arts Bremen
2020 everything was different. The first time ever the university was closed during the semester. This was the description of the first online course:
Due to the current situation, the course ELEMENTARY BASICS OF COLOUR, MATERIAL AND STRUCTURE by professor Ursula Zillig and Joachim Baldauf will not be held on the university campus. The course THE SQUISHY EYE OF THE MUMMY is completed from home using the TEAMS app, emails, and phone calls. The students take photos and design in their apartment and upload their work to instagram.com/da_ma_de_m The course is publicly viewable. The individual tasks are posted online by the teachers and the results are discussed in the group with the students. The goal of the course are sneaker designs with a self-designed textile surface.
#vonzuhause #fromhome
Limits
University of the Arts Bremen / A cooperation with Professor Claudia A. Cruz
The newspaper style magazine LIMITS designed by Madita Becker, Tabea Erhart, Andrej Gronau, Jil Kempa, Maikel Luka, Karl Friedrich Rummel and Gabriela Valdespino shows photography created during the photo course.
Photographers: Aimee Morrow, Daryna Demianchuk, Karl Friedrich Rummel, Bastian Lembeck, Rukmini Zöpel, Sassan Eskandarian, Gabriela Valdespino, Hyeonjeong Lee, Til Kempa, Seo Young Kim, Maikel Luka, Esther Lee, Tabea Erhart, Vanessa Habermann, Madita Becker, Owen McCleery, Famke Taddigs, Lukas Klose, Andrej Gronau and Sehee Cho Po.
Von Modeverräterinnen und Kleidertragenden
University of Applied Sciences Berlin
Every university has its own method of imparting knowledge. This also applies to the HTW in Berlin and is also clearly evident in the magazines we created in cooperation with Professor Anke Schloeder.
Von Modeverräterinnen und Kleidertragenden | Issue 1
The entire first issue of the magazine was photographed by Ukrainian photographer Dmitry Komissarenko with support of students and me as creative director.
Von Modeverräterinnen und Kleidertragenden | Issue 2
The entire second issue of the magazine was photographed by me with support of students.
Von Modeverräterinnen und Kleidertragenden | Issue 3
The entire third issue of the magazine was photographed by Jan Kapitän with support of students.
Von Modeverräterinnen und Kleidertragenden | Issue 4
An Ode to Fashion – The entire fourth issue of the magazine was photographed by me with support of students.
Brutal
University of the Arts Bremen
The fashion magazine BRUTAL is highly topical and published in a world that is as brutal as it is relentless. We all feel brutality in a different way. It is the increasing intensity of a tension or the extreme feeling of a moment. From sensitive emotions to almost pure violence, the apparent perception of brutality is exaggerated. Fashion, photography and graphics meet and merge cinematically. We, students of the University of the Arts Bremen, show our uncompromising solidarity and passion and unfold it with an approachable view of ourselves and the outside world.
– Mara Djukarić
BRUTAL Magazine is an interdisciplinary project in the Integrated Design study program. It is published by the team of Andrea Rauschenbusch (professor of communication design), Ursula Zillig (professor of fashion design) and me. I supervised the photo shoots in cooperation with LEICA CAMERA AG.
The images shown here are photographed by Falk Helmbold, Bea Sita Bruhn, Jonathan Tschaikowski, Lucia Öhrig, Rukmini Zöpel Laura McFarlane and Karim Fuad.
It is the cinematic editing of the publication that captivates with its independent diversity and enormous expressiveness.
- Press release
eee
University of Applied Sciences Berlin
A magazine of a different kind. Photographs that are not clearly assigned to the authors, texts that were generated by a software, a cover without a title text and standard typography. Rethink magazine.
Text processing by Cornelius Carstens.Photography by Jaap Bräutigam, Cornelius Carstens, Nikolas Fahlbusch, Steffen Fedtke, Laura Gramm, Julia Heitz, Kathleen Hughes, Laura-Sophie Jung, Annemarie Lahr-Eigen, Julia Mertes, Lisa Marleen Müller, Alexander Niklass, Laura Peter, Felix Rabas, Jakob Rudolph, Johanna Rummel, Sandra Scharpf and Hanko Ye.
Schön hässlich
University of the Arts Bremen
Norms and limits of beauty ideals. The magazine opposes the standardization of only beautiful fashion on synchronised beautiful bodies and shows how things can be done differently: fashion, photo galleries and texts no longer separate beautiful and ugly. They explore the limits and sometimes go more in one direction, sometimes more in the other. Values and ideas are infiltrated, taboos are broken, gender expectations are relativized.
Cover photo by Falk Helmbold.
In Search
Academy of Fine Arts Maastricht
Communication, inspiration, exploration. Together with 32 students, Dirk Reynders and Elke Lutgering of the ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS MAASTRICHT, we created a newspaper with the topic Berlin. In the 1920s, so-called EXTRABLÄTTER appeared several times a day with the latest news. In this tradition the students photographed, designed and printed IN SEARCH in a few hours.
The images shown here were photographed by Pol Veldhuijzen, Miriam Sentler, Yoshi Hoet, Thijs van der Heijden, Domino Vugts and Anna van Oosterzee.
How to create Originals in Times of Eclecticism
University of Applied Sciences Berlin
How do you create originals in times of idea theft? How do you arm yourself against the temptation to imitate? How do you make images that tell stories? Isolation is not an option. The computer is not the solution. This magazine documents a path to the original. It shows success stories. It thrives on the permission to fail and the courage to let go. It asks what your photo has to do with you and it makes it clear in pictures and interviews that a fashion photo not only requires diligence and precision, but is also the result of teamwork.
The images shown here are photographed by Sabine Zschaubitz, Sandra Gramm, Johanna Hullar and Gregor Schmidt.
Special thanks go to Eveline Hall, muse and model for the students.
Semipermeabel
University of Applied Sciences Berlin
16 students from the HTW Berlin deal with their own identity. From the fashionable outer shell to the search for their true skin, the young photographers stage themselves in a variety of self-portraits. The photographs deal with intimacy, passion, disguise and the question of when fashion becomes skin and skin becomes fashion.
Some images of the magazine were exhibited at SEVENSTARGALLERY Berlin. Special thanks to Thorsten Heinze, Nadine Barth and RECOM for their support.
Displayed image ATOPIA by Gregor Schmidt.
Untragbar
University of the Arts Bremen
The publication shows the work of students of INTEGRATED DESIGN. They designed the collections, developed the photography and styling, wrote the concepts and did the layout. The magazine was published in a large format daily newspaper style.
UNTRAGBAR is edited by professors Annette Geiger, Ursula Zillig and me.
The images you see here are photograhed by Björn Behrens, Rachel Pasztor, Anna Hadzelek, Annika Nagel and Caroline Speisser.
Der schöne Mann
University of the Arts Bremen
The Magazine presents a vision of man and fashion that students of INTEGRATED DESIGN at the UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS BREMEN have developed. They designed fifteen collections, conducted interviews with international designers and authors, and invited philosophers and essayists to contribute texts and formulated an ABC of fashion that also portrays herself in pointed comments - in her expectations and wishes of the man of today and tomorrow.
Professor Annette Geiger invited me to photograph the students' fashion. This was my first contact with the UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS BREMEN and my entrance to teaching.
“What can be shown, cannot be said.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
