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Photo-Studio

Travelling between African cities like Brazzaville, Bangui, Bamako and Lilongwe, while day dreaming of the formidable Samuel Fosso and energetic Malick Sidibe, I was stopping in Karen, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. There was a little Photo Studio. It was used a long time ago as a Portrait Studio for emigrants who wanted to show their families and friends how well they were doing in their new life. Music was always in the air. Next door was an old bar where once a beautiful woman used to sing slow songs full of longing and zest for life with a husky voice in a golden microphone. Here I set up a Penn had done in tures. I dressed lying around and

studio for a few days. I rented it from the owner, just like Irving Cuzco in 1948. Some of my new friends came by and I took their picthem up in old clothes, that I found in the backroom, using the props dreamed my African dream.

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Photo-Studio ÂŠ Rainer Elstermann, Courtesy ARTITLED! Contemporary Art, Herpen, www.artitled.nl and Mark Peet Visser, s-Hertogenbosch, www.markpeetvisser.com

Rain Elster

ner rmann

“I feel very privileged to be able to do what I do. I’m in the extremely happy position to say most of my dreams have come true. All the things in my work that I’ve really wanted have come true to a certain extent. It was difficult at times and for a long time I thought things won’t work out that way. But of course it’s too early to really say this. Getting older we realise it’s not making our dreams come true which is the real challenge, but to hold on to what we have and adjusting our old dreams to the changed person we have become.” I was born in West Berlin in 1965 and lived there until I moved to London in 1988. In 1992, I came back to Berlin and have been here ever since. Currently, I have my studio and apartment in Berlin, but stay most of the time from April to October in our house in the countryside. When I was 18, I started working with film. I worked with a group of experimental filmmakers. I had left school at 17 and didn’t know at all what I wanted to do. It never occurred to me that I could possibly be an artist. As a photographer, I’m entirely self-taught. I never had any training at all. I just looked at thousands of photographs for a very long time and tried to find out what kind of lighting had been used etc. Because I have never had any training, it was probably very important for me to be technically perfect. It still is in terms of being able to do what I want to do, but never just for technique’s sake. After a long period of many different occupations like running a little art cinema, where I was able to show my favourite movies from the past, I started working for commercial photography assignments in 2001. I worked for magazines which I found difficult in most instances because of the lack of time. I also worked for advertising agencies for whom I did many ad campaigns. In the course of the last two years, I have stopped doing commercial work completely. In 2005 / 06, I photographed the Old Masters series. It was clear from the beginning that this was an art project. This was followed up with a similar project based on images of Japanese people from the past and present. Around that time, I met my partner Andreas Stamm and started working with him. We collaborated on the Photo-Studio project. He is responsible for the wardrobe and props and furniture. Currently, we’re working on a new project together in which we’re collaborating even more closely.

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