INTERVIEW: Philippe Gerlach

Exclusive interview-talk-chat with our friend & photographer Philippe Gerlach. In this part we talked about religion, machines, commercials and instant feelings. The future is cold.

ben : PG whats the question i shouldnt ask you?
Philippe Gerlach : "how do you decide going somewhere, how do you plan your life ?"
ben : you mean "any plans for the near future?"..
Philippe Gerlach : yes, i have no idea, i'm kind of floating at the moment
ben : "floating" is always put in a negative context, doesn't the artist need more freedom than the bus driver?
Philippe Gerlach : of course they should, i don't wanna see stuff from someone who works stop by stop and goes in circles :)
Philippe Gerlach : but some kind of goal would be nice
ben : ok, lets talk about your art, your photographs have always a dark touch. what are your influences?
Philippe Gerlach : the dark touch comes from my drawing influences. i was drawing before i did photography. the black and white and the dark themes stayed with me. i loved odilon redon, alfred kubin, doeblin and masereel and their themes are also placed on the dark side. growing up in the ultra-catholic part of bavaria also adds to this. i can really only recommend the church of altötting in upper bavaria to anyone who is interested in medival christianity transferred to nowadays. anyone who suffered gravely from anything may it be an illness, accident, torture, emprisonment could swear to MARIA and if he survived his/her grief they would paint a picture in displaying the suffering and how MARIA saved them. These pictures are all collected and hung up inside a tiny church. So you have a church from wall to ceiling full of paintings of naively painted suffering, accompanied by the fake limps of people who suddenly could walk again or whose arm grew back or whatever. there are paintings from the 14th century till now. we would walk there from our school as school trips, you know the last day before the holidays. it's incredibly frightening and at the same time fascinating. also there is a cloister with a church in the village where i am from that has real skeletons displayed covered with gold and jewels but no cloths. one is a baby skeleton. raitenhaslach, worth a trip, though its mentioned nowhere. this is the area where the pope comes from by the way :) from the photographic side i have nan goldin.

Philippe Gerlach : nan goldin and i really like larry clark as well
Philippe Gerlach : i like the instant feeling of realism a photograph still adds, despite all the possibilties to fake it
ben : youre not in search for fake..?
Philippe Gerlach : no. i abstract into black and white, but thats all, no additional lighting or postproduction
ben : what we see is what you get
Philippe Gerlach : it never really works
Philippe Gerlach : but i try to keep it close to that
Philippe Gerlach : oh and i forgot a german photographer i really love, michael schmidt
ben : you say you often fail in achieving the photograph you wanted to get, where does this criticism come from?
Philippe Gerlach : i'm just always disappointed when i still remember the event and then afterwards i see the photographs i took of it and it's not like i experienced it. then i have to leave these pictures for a while and after some time, when the event left my memory a bit, i might like some of the pictures.
ben : you want to catch the "über-moment"..
Philippe Gerlach : :) i just would like to be able to transfer the moment as strongly as i felt it
ben : but you have the camera between it...
Philippe Gerlach : right, its a machine
ben : yes, its a machine
Philippe Gerlach : thats why i keep them small and handy
ben : you have the feeling the machine controls you?
Philippe Gerlach : no but it takes something of the immediacy of the feeling away. it's not like music that hits you directly! you know the difference between a concert and a gallery opening.
Philippe Gerlach : but photography freezes and that makes it fascinating i think, thats why i prefer it to films. there is no sound, no movement, and thats so incredibly unnatural.
Philippe Gerlach : everything that is natural is somehow in movement
Philippe Gerlach : and also when you take a picture you always get more than you actually saw. there are so many details that you only see in the still.
ben : for a machine the human is just a soulless body..
Philippe Gerlach : thats excactly why it doesn't work sometimes, right.
Philippe Gerlach : i am unhappy with a lot of my pictures
ben : internet seems to be a solution..
Philippe Gerlach : yeah and there is so much machine between two users
Philippe Gerlach : i think with video-communication everybody sees the world like a photographer
Philippe Gerlach : you can always pause
ben : or like the machine without the photographer behind it
Philippe Gerlach : yes cold - nothing touches
ben : you like to be somekind of apocalyptic?
Philippe Gerlach : i don' t try to, i just feel some places or situations are really bleak and soulless, even though they are in a totally everyday context
Philippe Gerlach : and somehow looking through the pictures on a contact sheet i always at first glance like the ones that somehow evoke that kind of atmosphere and i give in to that first feeling
Philippe Gerlach : there is no message behind it that i try to bring across, it just feels right
ben : ok, commercials have messages for us
Philippe Gerlach : right, listen to them!
 

....more in part 2

Part 2 of the epic interview between Philippe Gerlach and Ben Ross:

ben : i hope art is not the opposite of commercial
Philippe Gerlach : it would be a shame to reduce it to that
ben : what do you think about the stuff thats sourround us, the pictures and colors, do we need more gerlach than  gucci in the streets?
Philippe Gerlach : no, but i really would live somewhere without this kind of distractions once...i mean not the countryside...but a city without any propaganda what to believe in, buy, etc maybe that could all be transferred to online world and if you want to be free from this you would just have to disconnect
ben : you mean online is the junk commercial yard?
Philippe Gerlach : would be nice, but it's more like where all life happens now
ben : you work with analog?
Philippe Gerlach : yes
ben : its still state of the art..
Philippe Gerlach : no mainly due to the fact i mentioned above that i want to forget the event a bit before i see the image
ben : online is like a bubble...i think its awful
Philippe Gerlach : because the connection to your own real life is still hard to make
ben : because it doesnt need to
ben : again its the machine inbetween
Philippe Gerlach : right!
ben : can you imagine to shift again your medium?
Philippe Gerlach : it might happen but right now i'm still really curious about photography
ben : fine arts have the advantage to outlast the centuries
Philippe Gerlach : excactly and i don't want to work with anything even more technical than photography as i see how fast technologies seem old and unuseable, drawing is really the master here. it's going to exist as long as people have hands i think
ben : there is sometimes this discussion painting against photography..
Philippe Gerlach :  i don't join that, i think they are much too close
ben : you moved to paris. is the light better in paris?
Philippe Gerlach : paris is super yellow at night. where london is deep orange due to the brick walls and yellow lamps. paris just has yellow lamps on grey walls.
ben : we will never see that in you work..haha
Philippe Gerlach : hehehe
ben : we always see your muse...
Philippe Gerlach : i don't wanna work about something else when i'm in love it feels like time wasting or dividing my time
ben : what would be the perfect reception of your work?
Philippe Gerlach : i would like that one would see their everyday lifes as the adventure it is and not leave it up to commercials, art or movies or stories to explain it to them or make it richer. people should not be in need of art
ben : i think they aren't
ben: you like cinema?
Philippe Gerlach : yes i do
Philippe Gerlach : but i don't want to use it
ben : i really would like to see a moving picture of gerlach
Philippe Gerlach : hehe you know the one film i made
ben : ah yes!
Philippe Gerlach : the slowest film ever :)

part3

ben : straight edge oder was?
Philippe Gerlach : is das die frage?
ben : haha, try
Philippe Gerlach : answered so often , especially with my "punk"scene background but no: straight edge is an ugly movemnet. i didn't take drugs long before i knew what straight edge was or better: i decided to not take drugs.
ben : so no drugs and alkohol?
Philippe Gerlach : yes
ben : but not vegan
Philippe Gerlach : no
Philippe Gerlach : and i drink coffee (to stay with the straight edge discussion :)
ben : what about smoking?
Philippe Gerlach : no i don't care about smoking
Philippe Gerlach : all my girlfriends smoked just not for me
ben : seems its a girl thing like this iphone
Philippe Gerlach : hehehe
Philippe Gerlach : you have more iphone girls than boys in berlin?
ben : thats a good question. they are all fascinated by it. but i guess the fascination was about the same when water toilets were invented.
Philippe Gerlach : probably. oh i didn't tell you. we don't have a toilet in paris
ben : wow
Philippe Gerlach : just a hole where you knee over like in turkey, but with a flush of course
ben : it has a flush?
Philippe Gerlach : yes amazing
ben : sound s like a trendy thing...
Philippe Gerlach : no
ben : medieval toilet with modern enviroment

Philippe Gerlach : hehehe
ben : it all sounds like what we know about the artist in paris around 1900...
Philippe Gerlach : excactly, it's so pathetic. nothing changed here.
ben : how much do you produce at the moment? terabytes?
Philippe Gerlach : at least .)
ben : that's what art is made of, at least its like shitting
Philippe Gerlach : right
ben : everybody is an artist
Philippe Gerlach : everybody shits
ben : right
Philippe Gerlach : but some shit into holes and some sit while shitting, thats lazy and too comfortable
ben : some need drugs some don't and i need a hype. whats next , P.G.?
Philippe Gerlach : with me!? or in general?
ben : both
Philippe Gerlach : prognosen?
Philippe Gerlach : lots of technology!! i can't see any further.
ben : nobody is real
Philippe Gerlach : excactly because otherwise they couldn't stand their own existence
ben : do artist have the agenda to keep it real?
Philippe Gerlach : i try
Philippe Gerlach : wow that sounds idiotic
Philippe Gerlach : i try to keep it real :)

ben : haha
ben : thats the spirit
Philippe Gerlach : ahahaha
Philippe Gerlach : i have a motto
ben : finally
Philippe Gerlach : PG "trying hard to keep it real" hahaha
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www.philippegerlach.com