Christoph Musiol Berlin, Germany
Christoph Musiol studied photography and painting at University of Fine Arts, Berlin.
He is currently based in Berlin.
Christoph Musiol was chosen by photographer Margureite Oelofse
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Laatikkomo’s interview with Chrsitoph Musiol August 23rd, 2015.
L: Where are you from? What cities, and/or countries have you lived in – or what places have influenced you?
CM: I lived a couple of years between Paris and Berlin. Both cities had a strong influence on me, Paris with his timeless classic approach on beauty and Berlin with his rough and direct approach on real life.
L: What is your earliest memory of photography?
CM: Watching my father shooting landscape and architecture images with his Leica M from 1957. There I understood the for the first time the desire to capture the beauty of a subject.
L: What traits from your personal or cultural history do you think are apparent in the photographs you currently make, – or are they?
CM: I grew up in southern Germany close to Munich which is very much influenced by renaissance and baroque architecture and art. This had a strong influence on the way I see and create compositions. I just can’t create images without classic proportions and forms.
L: Your recent work, shown in Laatikkomo, is a series of studies on light and shadow and how these reflect and refract on water and skin. The playful energy of these images leads me to assume you particularly enjoy this kind of textual and technical study. Is your work broken up into “bread work” which you do for financial reasons and “artistic work” that you make out of your own interest – or do you make this kind of difference?
CM: I don’t make a difference between “work” and ”art” because the language of fashion photography gives me the possibility to capture every subject in the perfect form. Of course there a degrees of creative freedom when it comes to pure commercial work.
L: My perception of Fashion photography is that in a fairytale kind of way, it focuses on eternal or pure beauty. In your opinion, what makes a beautiful image?
CM: I my opinion my work has nothing to do with a fairytale kind of way – it’s more the attempt to depict the subject in front of me in its most pure and honest way with the creative tools photography gives me to build a perfect image.
L. Some sectors of the fashion industry have increasingly used imagery that mixes violence and sexualized photographs of young women for product promotion. As a fashion photographer yourself, do you think the glamorization of this kind of imagery is the responsibility of the photographer, the product manager, the artistic director, etc. and ultimately who’s image is it?
CM: Its definitely also the responsibility of the photographer who agreed to shoot in this kind of style. In any case every photographer is booked for his specific approach to the subject, so if he deals with violence and sex in his imagery he is pretty aware what he is doing.
L: Do you have a message, or an overall feeling you would like to communicate through your images regardless of what or who the photograph will be used for?
CM: I don’t have a specific message to communicate – my work is all about the depiction of beauty, grace and elegance with a touch of rough reality. Its my very personal contribution to see the world and give others the possibility to see it in the same way.
L: Could you list 5 (or more) words you were thinking about when you made this series shown in Laatikkomo?
CM: Sun, heat, water, light and body.
Thank you so much Christoph!