Photo films
PHOTO FILM – THINKING IN SEQUENCES
Gerd Roscher in a conversation with Leonore Mau (2006)
Gerd Roscher (GR): It is extremely unusual for two artists to collaborate, with each one working in their own terrain while continually consulting one another and banding together. How should we imagine your cooperation, the collaboration between Hubert Fichte and yourself? How did your joint photo films come about?
Leonore Mau (LM): We had been already living here for a while when we were invited to a festive dinner at Hamburg’s Übersee-Club (Overseas Club). Seated opposite us was a couple who drew us into conversation. And suddenly the woman asked, “Tell me, where in fact do you live?” And we replied, “We live in Dürerstrasse 9”. “What?” she said, “We live in number eight.” In the house directly opposite you. The man was head of films at the NDR [Norddeutscher Rundfunk: North German television]. They invited us to dinner one evening and then the man, Reinhard Hagen, began saying how much he would like to broadcast photo films. Hubert said, “Photo films. We can do that, right off.” Without asking me. So then we discussed it at length when we got back home. I hadn’t the slightest idea how technically such photo films are made.
Then we went on a short holiday to Greece. On the last day but one we ate something that was off and Hubert came down pretty badly with hepatitis. The doctor said, “You may talk as much as you like, but avoid doing anything physical. You must stay in bed or go into hospital.” So Hubert then asked me, “Are you willing to take care of me, like make mashed potato every day?” I will never make so much mashed potato in my life again. But alright, that’s what I did. During that time we talked about the film. He said, “You need about 500 photos for a twenty-minute film. So you can go out every day. I can lie here alone in bed, and when you return you make mashed potato for me.” So that’s what we did: for weeks on end I set off in the morning. I photographed the world of dockworkers without a regular job and went to the “auction” every morning. They are really poor devils because in some circumstances they go there every morning in the hope of getting hired that day. But that doesn’t always happen. Finally, the boss of this place said to me, “Please come with me to my office after the auction. Because they don’t like photographs being taken during the auction, it makes them aggressive.” For half an hour I sat with the boss, after which he accompanied me back onto the street. That’s when my work began, properly getting to know people like that and seeing how they lived.
One woman had just had a baby and her husband would say goodbye each morning. Some of them were living in really poor conditions. I kept going back to these neighbourhoods and photographed the houses and the people when they went shopping. And then in Hamburg harbour. I told myself I had to go along with them, to one of those big ships. But how was I to get there? They were pleased that someone wanted to accompany them. I crossed over with them to a big ship in a sort of rusty old launch. When I arrived I was supposed to climb up on board the ship, up a rusty old ladder. As I ascended, one camera was dangling behind me, one in front. I felt utterly wretched. But I thought: you’ve got yourself into this, and you’ve also still got that mashed potato to make. So I clambered up this rusty ladder. Oh God, I was so horribly afraid. I don’t have a head for heights. But all of a sudden I was up there on the ship, between sacks of sugar and I don’t know whatever else was there. And the next moment I was busy working and that made me feel much better. I enjoyed that. I have no idea how many hours I was up there on the ship when it occurred to me I had to get back down again. But I managed that too without falling into the Elbe.
GR: Did your films generally come about with your photos already shot and Hubert then writing a commentary afterwards? Or did he sometimes also make specifications, like: I am interested in this or that, I would like you to shoot such and such a sequence?
In your Portuguese film Der Fischmarkt und die Fische (D, 1968) it feels as if he already had certain things in mind.
LM: Yes, making the Portuguese film was so exciting. It was all my own doing. Almost all of it was in my hands. I was able to slide around on my knees and point the camera right into the fishes’ jaws. But making the first film – Der Tag eines unständigen Hafenarbeiters (D, 1966) – was entirely different. Here, I initially had no idea at all what I was supposed to photograph. But Hubert was very animated. He was really pleased with the results. He then wrote the text and the film was shown. The people at the NDR were also very impressed and said, “If you find a subject like that again, just do it.” And the subject was Portugal and was the fish.
GR: So how did you go about it, did you both look through the photographs and then say, “This is a block. That might all fit together, these are the fish, and so on”?
LM: Yes, it all happened quite fast. But making the prints took quite a while. In the end I did a whole batch, several hundred prints in one go – all small-format prints, that took less time. In the process I also began to properly understand how you construct a film like this, how this can become a film. It is two altogether different things, whether you are taking one individual photo after another or taking photos for a film. There are photos I would never normally take if they weren’t for a film. For instance, the woman in the dockworker film who is standing in a quite miserable little kitchen, buttering sandwiches for her husband. I photographed all that kind of stuff!
GR: Do you then think more in sequences or episodes?
LM: Yes, you think more in terms of sequences and attach importance to certain things which I wouldn’t otherwise consider for a photo I normally shoot. Things that wouldn’t usually grab my attention. Hubert then calibrated the texts to the film’s time line. On the back of each photo he noted how long it should stay in frame, i.e. five seconds. I’ve no idea where he got this knowhow from. Everyone was thrilled. We then went to the animation studios of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk. They had a camera that was suspended, pointing down, and the photo lay underneath it. Then someone pressed the button for a certain number of seconds. And the outcome was the film.
GR: What about Die Spanische Treppe (D, 1970), do you still remember how things were?
LM: Yes, of course, I really enjoyed that too. Some of the people on the steps already knew me. No one ever abused me or shouted stuff like “Piss off!” The people there were from all walks of life. There was always something to photograph and no one ever said “no”. Even Ingeborg Bachmann came along. I did invite a couple of people to come especially. Hans Meyer, Bachmann and a few more. The others were all people who liked sitting around on these steps and chatting, or who slept on the wall.
GR: The film’s commentary includes a passage that talks about an obnoxious janitor. It’s a particularly daring passage that departs quite far from what’s happening just there in the images.
LM: That was the concierge at the Villa Massimo. As Hubert had found out, the man had a mirror installed inside his little janitor’s office so he could see who was entering and when, with whom, whether alone, or – God forbid! – with a woman or a man. He wrote it all down. That riled Hubert, who said, “I’d really like to kill him!”
GR: Or put him in the film! The journeys on which the photo films are based, beyond the dockworker film, came about during a certain period of your work when you left Hamburg and made your way to Africa and the Caribbean. Was in fact [Zwei Mal 45 Bilder / Sätze aus] Agadir (D, 1971), shot in Morocco, the final one in this series?
LM: Yes, it was. Personally, I feel it is weaker than the others. Particularly, it is only about architecture because in Arab towns, as well as in the country, people don’t want to be photographed.
You have to respect how they see things, namely that a part of their soul is being stolen from them. That’s why I think the film turned out to be quite boring.
GR: As such, Agadir is an interesting subject, since back then when you were photographing there it had just been destroyed in an earthquake and was then rebuilt as a modern city. But I too feel that the film doesn’t get properly inside this subject.
LM: No, it doesn’t. And when we started out we didn’t have this idea at all. And if you sense straightaway that people are getting angry at you for taking photos of them, it’s something you have to respect. I don’t like trying to catch people off-guard. Elsewhere I’ve also always asked people first. Except with the photos I took at the autopsy [in the portfolio Grosse Anatomie (1977)]. There, we met the doctor outside this house, someone we already knew, and he asked me himself. A bus had just drawn up that was empty. A dead man was carried out. The doctor said to me, “I have to go indoors now. Oh, you have a camera around your neck. Well, do you want to join me?” I thought, oh God, this smell – I won’t be able to stand it. But replied, “OK, I’ll come”. And then it was absolutely fascinating. A couple of times I was quite shocked at myself by how much it fascinated me.
GR: You and Hubert, did you mostly travel with very little luggage?
LM: No, not that little. I had my three cameras to carry, that’s a lot, then the various lenses for them. I was constantly changing lenses. I would still do that today too, because for me a telephoto lens gives you something different from when you go up close – also something you can’t do everywhere…
GR: You once told me that in those days you occasionally missed your films being first broadcast on TV because you had already left to travel again. So you produced them at the NDR and were then sometimes away for as long as a year?
LM: That’s right. It’s only recently that I first saw the film about Agadir.
GR: What actually brought this unusual experience with photo films to an end? Because it was for only a few years that you were making them.
LM: Because everyone stopped making them. We couldn’t make photo films on our own because we didn’t have the necessary film equipment. And then we got so fascinated by our involvement with so-called hybrid religions, as you can also see in our books. You can’t become that fascinated by two things at the same time and do them both really well.
Gerd Roscher conducted the interview with Leonore Mau on May 27, 2006 in Hamburg. 2009 the interview was published in the publication “Viva Fotofilm!” by Schürenverlag: https://www.schueren-verlag.de/programm/titel/279-viva-fotofilm-bewegt-unbewegt.html
Links to the photo films (extracts):
- Der Tag eines unständigen Hafenarbeiters
- Der Fischmarkt und die Fische
- Die Spanische Treppe
- Zwei Mal 45 Bilder / Sätze aus Agadir
Untitled (Dockworkers with sacks), 1966
© bpk / S. Fischer Stiftung / Leonore Mau
Fischmaul, 1964
© bpk / S. Fischer Stiftung / Leonore Mau
Untitled (On the Spanish Steps), 1967/68
© bpk / S. Fischer Stiftung / Leonore Mau
Untitled (Street scene in Agadir), 1970
© bpk / S. Fischer Stiftung / Leonore Mau
