Life behind fashion
The Berlin Fashionweek Photodiary™ #3 has been released on October 19th. Studios, fittings, and castings: The Berlin Fashionweek Photodiary™ provides behind the scenes glimpses of Berlin Fashion Week - grittily and realistically photographed, all on film. The third edition of the award-winning series will be published in September by seltmann+söhne.
“There are enough perfectly
staged pictures of fashion shows. I am interested in little, special moments - for example, the expression in the eyes of a model, just before she enters the catwalk.”
says photographer Marc Schuhmann. In collaboration with creative director Joern Toellner, he published The Berlin Fashionweek Photodiary™. Since 2009, both have worked together to document Berlin Fashion Week in an unusual way: gritty and subjective. Instead of pictures of sterile models, The Berlin Fashionweek Photodiary ™ captures scenes from the backstage areas of fittings and castings; and also takes us into the otherwise closely guarded designstudios. For #3, six photographers set out in July 2011. Among other things, they feature Lala Berlin, Perret Schaad, and Vladimir Karaleev from a new perspective. Another focus this time will be the work of Austrian fashion designers. The images are complemented by essays and spontaneous side notes
and statements from the designers. All of the photographers worked exclusively with small analog rangefinder cameras, instead of large digital SLR equipment. “Good pictures are not created by expensive lenses,” say both editors. Subsequent image processing is omitted entirely; for the two initiators of the project it is an authentic documentation of the fashion week of the people who create it, and the life behind the stage: it is to work as a diary, not a fashion magazine featuring the current season. With this way of working, the project consciously resists the fl ood of digital images. While online
coverage is as fast-paced as the industry itself, and we forget the pictures clicked upon as fast as we click them, Marc Schuhmann and Joern Toellner create something permanent – and thus valuable. Toellner has convincingly and simply designed the book and each edition contains high-quality prints, which are stitched and bound in velvet. The edition is strictly limited to 400 copies. In July 2011 The Berlin Fashionweek Photodiary™ #2 was recognized with the Red Dot Award: Communication Design. The renowned Paris department store, Colette, has also picked up the book in its collection. After the huge success of previous editions, The Berlin Fashionweek Photodiary ™ #3 continues what it has established and aims to reinterpret what unfolds- because no two days are ever the same, and every fashion week a surprise.
