One year ago today, Sibylle died. We miss her.
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Sibylle Bergemann
01.11.2011 | | Inside OSTKREUZ -
Tobias Kruse - New Member of OSTKREUZ
14.03.2011 | | Inside OSTKREUZSince 1 March Tobias Kruse is our new OSTKREUZ-photographer, high time for an interview! In dialogue with Ute Mahler he talks about early paragons, dreamjobs and his view on commissioned work.
© Thomas Meyer/OSTKREUZ -
Marco Dorn - Profile
06.08.2010 | | Inside OSTKREUZOur office has a new addition. Marco Dorn is our new apprentice and we would like to introduce him with a short profile.
© Christoph Wilde -
Inside OSTKREUZ - Online galery
15.07.2010 | | Inside OSTKREUZOur OSTKREUZ anniversary exhibition ’The city. Becoming and Decaying’ may have ended but it has left traces: We are glad to present our new online gallery. Each of the eighteen photographers has chosen one picture which is also available in a complete edition including the exhibition catalogue.
www.ostkreuz-galerie.de
screenshot: www.ostkreuz-galerie.de
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Inside OSTKREUZ - Maik Reichert - Documentary film
14.07.2010 | | Inside OSTKREUZMaik Reichert is a freelance photographer and a documentary filmmaker. He studies Audiovisual Media at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. For his graduate thesis film he attended all of the 18 photographers of the agency OSTKREUZ with his camera for a period of one year. The project is not finished yet but you can see two clips of it here. Unfortunately the film is only in German.
Part 1:
Part 2:
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The Intern - Stories
05.03.2010 | | Inside OSTKREUZNow for the second one
These last weeks a lot has happened at OSTKREUZ and although many hours were merely filled with creating dates for photographs in the databank, the intern is still excited to be here! Why? Because the few lines you read here are only a fraction of all that really happens!Recently Julian Roeder took me to yet another one of his shootings for "retrotrend". In the extremely narrow kitchen, Julian Roeder at times leaning over, then again squeezed under the sink, the portrayed woman in front of a gaudy blue wall with drawn "insanely awesome stuff" tape pointed at the photographer, great picture. Me with flash in hand in front of gaudy blue wall, no picture - but took a lot from it. Especially knowing the efforts put into a picture: Besides the technical problems such as light, background, props, space, etc, but what the reader, or better the observer often isn't aware of are exertions like running through the city, waiting for the subway, pasting fake-ticket sellers, finding the right address, having a quick smoke, thinking of a sensible composition, which the editor will also like... The photographer, however, sitting here, reviewing his images, talking with his colleagues, receiving his pay check for last month, will quite frequently ask himself - and this is a question I, too, ask myself quite often - will this pay the rent?
© David Vogt
Annette Hauschild photographed Moazzam Begg for Amnesty International. Mr. Begg had, innocently and without accusation, been held and tortured at the U.S. detention camps in Kandahar and Bagram (Afghanistan), as well as in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. I was allowed to come along and learned a lot from Mrs. Speidel the Campaign and Communication Representative, who accompanied him, about Amnesty International.
Much is going on here at the agency, a lot of photographers, a lot of pictures, "The City", the OSTREUZ exhibition and book project, is going at full speed. For me it is an exciting time, to be here while all this is going on, to see what the photographers bring from their overseas trips, the pictures, the stories, the accidents and coincidences, broken cameras... but also minds that still wander in other places of the world, while they themselves already have to sit here and evaluate and make selections of their photographs, make proofs, move data and at last, sitting at the round table, reconnect with each other, but also themselves, through conversations and discussions. -
The intern - David Vogt
10.02.2010 | | Inside OSTKREUZSo I'm the intern. And I'd like to to tell you a little about the agency OSTKREUZ, directly from my workplace.
I'm actually studying Communication Design here in Berlin, but want to photograph. I have always been excited about stories, stories about life, stories that bring the people, from wherever, may it be from South America or from in front of your doorstep, to the people here. My Prof. recommended Ostkreuz to me and now and then I visited the website, and was always inspired by stories like "Living on a Dump" by Jordis Antonia Schloesser, "Sworn Virgins" by Pepa Hristova, now especially by Andrej Krementschouk's "Come Bury Me" (I love the stories he tells from his journeys when he's here), even Joerg Brueggemann's "Same Same But Different" (although he's already off and away in Indonesia, tinkering on another story). So, really, I love stories from other places - I'm young and still have this wanderlust urging me to go - but particularily at home photography can make things visible, which are no longer noticed by the majority of the people. Now I'm finally here (again, on recommendation - of the photographer I assisted the last three months).
Considering the Praktikum.doc I'm supposed to tear out published photographs from magazines, send out the "daily downloads" ("IMPORTANT: Check all image downloads, varify all clients, anticipate possible complications! e.g. "BILD" - largest german yellow press - downloads a picture of one of Germany's most famous television hosts, Guenther Jauch: oh oh"), browse the database for new clients, answer image requests, "gladly do" price arrangements!
Up until now, though, it was actually more interesting than all that may sound like! viz. not only is there the computer screen, but also a bunch of quite interesting people, who in turn do not only sit in front of a screen themselves:
For example, I assisted Annette Hauschild casting kids for a new designer collection (photo). At the end, all the kids were jumping around the "photographer's room", having been animated out of their shyness by the photographer.
© Annette Hauschild/OSTKREUZ
I also pulled out old photographs from the analogue archive (a room full of negatives and prints, many quite some years older than myself, stored away in boxes and cupboards... but more about that later), scanned them, sent the files, ineptly greeted the requester with "Dear Mrs ..." instead of the appropriate "Mr."! At the weekly office meeting I curiously followed the discussions of the established with the younger photographers (I'm not sure, exactly, what it was all about anymore, perhaps the media crisis or the economic crisis, perhaps the different approaches of the photographers, or of the agency... one learns a lot about life here).Later I listened in on the blog meeting and have now begun to write: "The Intern"", that's me, and I want to, from time to time, allow you a view into OSTKREUZ, want to show you that it's more than just the invisible office in Greifswalder Strasse 216 (only a small, one inch wide sticker next to the bell betrays it), that it's full of hunters and gatherers, full of images and opinions, thirsty for action.
David Vogt -
Jörg Brüggemann
19.10.2009 | | Inside OSTKREUZEspen Eichhöfer: In your thesis "Same Same But Different" you describe backpacking in Southeast Asia. Can you explain how you came to the topic and how you implement it?
Jörg Brüggemann: I got the idea when I travelled myself as a backpacker through South America a couple of years ago. Also here the alternative travel guide "Lonely Planet" defines the itineraries of backpackers. I heard from other travellers that this phenomenon in Southeast Asia will be much bigger, then I went to India for the first time. I went there for a second time, and also to Thailand and Laos - always as a backpacker packed with a “Lonely Planet”. If you open it on the second double page you find a map of the country with the "hot spots" - the specific recommendations. Then I went there and in a total I was on the road for three months.
One of the main thoughts, which I had while photographing, was that this travelling has nothing to do with alternative or individual tourism any more, but is a new type of package holidays. By now millions of young people from the Western world travel each year in the second or third world countries, for adventure, for party, for taking drugs, falling in love, hanging out at the beach or trekking into the mountains. It does not matter whether you are in the Andes or the Himalayas, in the Caribbean or the Gulf of Thailand. Everywhere there are pizza and falafel, everywhere smoking weed, everywhere hearing Bob Marley... Same Same But Different.
© Jörg Brüggemann/OSTKREUZ
