OLD BUT NEW

Walking around this small designer’s wood shop, looking for some new furniture for my home, it pretty much hit me: His products would be perfect for my New Designs shoot.

This designer’s projects are all about recycling. Giving new life to old products, and making sure that good materials do not go to waste. Being an old fart myself, I just had to work with this.

He likes to find old worn products, take them apart and find new use for them.

This is all done with the idea of making as small an impact on our Earth as possible. He is calling this collection Re-using. An old floor could be turned into small shelfs, the legs of a table could be new candlesticks and so on. When he is done, almost nothing goes to waste, and you will have a product that will last for many years to come. You will also have a one of a kind in your house.

For this shoot, I was looking at a small bookcase.

The base of the bookcase is actually the top of an old tablze - the shelfs the same, but they are sanded down making them look brand new. This way the bookcase fits into a new home as well as an older home.

The challenge for me was to take a gallery photo, showing the functions of this great bookcase.

It would take away the focus of the book case, if I put too many things on the shelves. So, I came up with the idea of playing with shadows. This way, you would see the function of the bookcase without the products taking too much focus. Now, all I had to do was to get in the studio and begin my photoshoot. The candlestick (with a candle in it) you see as a shadow, is actually a part of the old leg for the same table, that is now being reused for this bookcase.

For this project I was determined to contact Felicia Danser, with whom I have worked with before, and asked if she had any new designs. She had new designs, but instead she wanted to create something completely new, based on the ideas we had together. So, the process began and together we created this photograph.

About the design Felicia says: “Auric tenderness is about seeking strength in vulnerability and expressing a power statement through soft feminine values. For this project, the inspiration is transparency through fabric, to give a seduced feeling to the garment in an elegant and modern way. As a designer I describe myself as a storyteller, I like to tell stories through my designs and to give the consumer more value and a stronger connec- tion through clothing. My design-universe is often inspired by these characteristics: earthiness, organic, asymmetrical or a personal belief.”

Nature was a constant element in our talks about this project, so naturally it had to be a large part of the photo as well. The nature though, was not meant to represent beauty and softness, but instead a raw, uncompromising and unwelcoming place, thus playing up against the elegant and feminine characteristics of the design. In the photo, I wanted to emphasise the earthiness and organic universe of the clothes, and the vulnerability, strength and determination of our two main characters.

Andreas Dam Zagler