Andreas Gehrke, Neighborhood Conversations

050 PH • New York City, New York, USA

AK: Please introduce yourself: What is your name, where are you from, what do you do?

AG: My Name is Andreas Gehrke, I was born and raised in Berlin. I’m a photographer and I am publisher at «Drittel Books».

AK: What is your relationship with photography? How did you get into it?

AG: I started very early. I was first exposed to it through my father, who taught me some skills in the dark room and how to process b/w films. Later as a teenager I joined an artist group here in Berlin before I finished my self-taught education as a photographer’s assistant in Hamburg.

AK: What do you think triggers you to photograph in a certain moment? Is it planned or solely driven by intuition?

AG: It’s a mix of intuition and the need to react to what I see in society, maybe to process the grievances and absurdities too.

AK: What is the story you want your pictures to tell?

AG: As most of my pictures are free of narrative aspects, I’d say they should give you a bigger picture — a different view on reality. In the sense of aesthetic perception, not misconstruing reality through sensationalism.

AK: Which city would you like to visit the most and why?

AG: If I had a time machine it would definitely be Istanbul in the 50’s or Beirut before the war. But right now I’m happy to go anywhere and I’ll find my personal highlights.

AK: Tell me about your project «Neighborhood Conversations».What was your intention, and how did you come up with the Idea?

AG: I started photographing the New York neighborhoods 2007, it was not my first visit but for the first time I had my 4x5″ camera with me. Since then the series has been continued on any occasion to be in NYC. I like the challenge to photograph such an iconic city, and NYC is maybe the most iconic city in the world.

Though I had never much interest in Manhattan, actually I needed to force myself to photograph this borough for the reason of completeness. It would have been a mistake to avoid it. 

Another driving force is my sentimental relationship with the city. I always been listing to a lot of Rap-Music, and as a teenager actually nothing else: strictly Rap and Jazz. In those days in the early 90’s Hip-Hop culture was different, it was less mainstream, especially in Germany.

Less mainstream demands more dedication and more interest in the music history and where it is coming from. Hip-Hop culture is very urban and what I do in my work can be seen as urban anthropology in photography.

AK: Which project did you never finish?

AG: My series ‹SEE› is still unfinished. This long-time documentary is about the permanently shifting landscape of a former coal mining area in the south-east of Germany. But it’s about time for a new trip to see what has changed.

AK: What is that one place you have never managed to photograph at and which is now forever gone?

AG: I wish I had photographed Berlin in the early 90’s but I was too young and had no interest in my hometown. It took me another 25 years to be ready for such a documentary—now, when it’s almost too late.

AK: If you could travel back/ forth in time, what advice would you give your younger/ older self?

AG: Right now maybe my advice would be: «find a real job!» I think professional photography—and art photography too—suffer heavily because our images have become less valued by society. The framing methods and copy-paste culture of the internet changed the market and in my opinion reached a critical point.

AK: What do you prefer saying: to take a photograph or to make a photograph and why?

AG: I’m German, so I tend to say «I make a photograph» ☻︎ But actually it depends what kind of picture I’m working on.

AK: Asking you to single it out, what was the most interesting experience you have had while photographing?

AG: Sometimes the act of photographing calms me down and excites me at the same time.

AK: If it wasn’t for photography, what would you be interested in doing instead?

AG: I honestly have no idea!

AK: Please, describe one of your pictures to a blind person.

AG: If you imagine a landscape or cityscape which is so still and quiet, it’s rather a long stretched moment than a decisive moment. And you don’t know if something is going to happen or something has just happened. That could be one of my images.

AK: What are you currently working on, and—if there is—what is your next project/ journey?

AG: For more than three years I have been working on a Berlin documentary and it should soon be finished. It’s a mixture of historical references, urban anonymity and my artistic definition of Berlin’s architectural character. The challenge is for me to look close while the city obviously is at a turning point of loosing it‘s identity.

AK: Thank you, Andreas!

Editorial Notes:

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Photography: Andreas Gehrke (2019)
Location: New York City, New York, USA

Links: Website, Instagram, Drittel Books