Daniel Sannwald: The Oldest Child Alive

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DaNIeL SaNNwaLD the oLdest chILd aLIve PoRtRaIt by PavEl voz woRdS by StEFFEn MICHElS

Daniel sannwalD walks Down an east lonDon market in tHe rain, His arms wiDe open, to embrace me like we’ve been frienDs for years. “heY, Wie gehT’s?” He enquires witH sincere entHusiasm in His voice, erasing any fears our interview coulD turn out stiff anD formal. born in germany, sannwalD Has liveD in inDonesia, tHailanD anD antwerp wHere He graDuateD from tHe prestigious royal acaDemy of fine arts. wHen He was 24, tHe image maker was publisHeD in DazeD & confuseD after senDing a HanD-written letter to nicola formicHetti wHo – before His engagements witH mugler Diesel anD laDy gaga – launcHeD Hiscareer witH tHe magazine.

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child’s mind, Sannwald’s perspective is experimental rather than judgmental. It seeks to fully investigate and engage with some of life’s big questions in a way infants do – something that is commonly dismissed by adults who by trend underestimate children.

The techniques employed by the photographer include cutting, layering, mirroring, drawing, folding, deforming and more. Whether analogue or digital, they are instruments to visualize abstract concepts or alternatively and perhaps more pivotally, they are the concepts. If Sannwald has a specific style, it is fearless and intuitive, wicked enough to get hooked and relatable enough to stay interested in. Every image emits a sentiment that reverberates in the mind until its full meaning is unfolded, proving there is substance beyond shock value. What makes Daniel Sannwald particularly interesting is that although you can’t quite put your finger on him as an image maker, he as a person will put his arms around you in no time.

Sean O’Pry, Le Monde M Magazine, 2013

I couldn’t help but looking at your Instagram before our interview. You really seem to have a thing for Disney, Pokémon and baby animals. Would you say you’re someone who is in touch with their inner child?

I find it very important never to lose the connection to one’s inner child. I actually try to remind myself of my inner child and to keep it alive through different activities I try to engage in every week. For example, on one day I ask myself what the child inside me would like to do at a certain moment and the answer is painting. What else can you say? It’s a complicated question. Let me think…

Since then, the photographer has shot for i-D, POP, Numéro, Arena Homme +, Vogue Hommes Japan and directed music videos for M.I.A. and John Legend. He was recently named one of the ten best German fashion photographers of our time by the Goethe-Institut. His road, however, has been a bumpy one from the start. At the tender age of seven, Sannwald lost his father who committed suicide after a tumultuous couple of years that frequently saw him intoxicated and unable to take care of his wife and son.

Eventually, Sannwald and his mother started living as vagabonds; always on the road but never arriving anywhere. On a trip to Turkey, he grabbed his mother’s camera to take her picture while she was fast asleep in her car. “At that moment she symbolized every idealistic feeling I had about a woman”, he recalls. Perhaps it was there and then that the cheerful image maker first fell through the looking glass – or in his case, the camera lens.

This side of the lens, the world looks different.

Sannwald leaves behind stressful childhood memories of a father who put him behind the wheel whilst driving on the freeway and sang him to sleep with an electric guitar. The only warm memory, as the photographer puts it, is one in which he lay down on his father’s belly to feel him breathing in his sleep. Notably, this experience also marks the moment Sannwald

first became aware of his homosexuality.

It took the image maker years and heaps of money to get where he is now: someone once invested a sum in him you could more or less buy a house with. There is a lot of money to be made in fashion photography if you have a name but a name doesn’t come with talent and a camera – Sannwald still borrows the latter from his friends. It is with genuine truth that he speaks about compromises, industry demands and what he refers to as his digital playground, a land beyond the worries and troubles determining everyday life.

This is a land of distorted bodies and fantastic landscapes where absurdity isn’t a last resort but a brick in the foundation. As if by magic rather than picture editing software, skin adopts alien shades, flashes of light appear out of nowhere and supernatural creatures shoot laser beams out of their eyes. Associations that come to mind are as numerous as the pictures in Sannwald’s growing catalogue. Flicking through it, a reader is likely to feel reminded of Expressionism and Dada as well as cultural phenomena and modern day trivia ranging from Hamlet, King Kong and The Addams Family to techno, cheeseburgers and video games Tekken and Tetris. Geometry and anatomy, symbolism and religion, voyeurism and sex; they all coexist in this sphere which is bursting at the seams. Much like a

Sure, take your time.

I think the most important thing I’d like to say in regards to this is that it’s important to maintain this connection and I have done that until now. I’m 35 now but I think I’m more of a child than your average thirty-five-year old.

You’ve mentioned earlier you’d like to write a children’s book at some point. Where does this desire come from?

I believe it’s partly got to do with the child within me being so present but also the fact that I’ve been collecting children’s books for years. They’re not really novels. I think Astrid Lindgren books and similar books are cool but I’m drawn towards short stories with lots of illustrations that stimulate the imagination.

Often, when I look at art books, I go into the children’s book department because art is explained in a nicer way. It’s not simplified but it’s to the point and pure. You immediately get it and I find that exciting.

Speaking of your childhood, did your father – who was an artist – encourage you to engage with your creativity? Did he influence you a lot?

My father died very early. He committed suicide when I was about six or seven. I have to say I didn’t get a whole lot from him and I wouldn’t say he’s supported my creative side. He wasn’t present enough for that. He took a lot of drugs and drank. He was home very little and he actu-

ally rather pressured me because he wanted to have a really masculine son and for me to take karate lessons which I wasn’t keen on at all. So he didn’t really support me in exploring the fantastic worlds I already thought of as a child.

However, he was a photographer as well and years later, I had a lot of unexplained questions because I knew so little about him. The only memories I have until today are actually negative ones, for example arguments or that one time he entered our house through a window, trying to kidnap me… It was terrible. And I thought it was sad that there were only negative memories so I started looking at all his old work – photographs and paintings and films and that eventually inspired me to do my own stuff.

The following is quite personal and I leave it up to you how you would like to answer it.

I feel like when we experience loss, we often like to remind ourselves of earlier times.

Do you think a reason for you to connect with your childhood is to feel closer to the years your father was still around?

It’s maybe a bit the wish for a childhood I would have liked to have. I mean I have an amazing mother who was always there for me and who really fostered my imagination and everything I lived for at the time but yes, maybe it’s that wish for a picture perfect family.

In accordance with this, your professional practice with all its fantastic and surreal qualities should be quite therapeutic for you. Is it an escape into an alternative world? One where things look and are different.

Yes. A little less nowadays but I think when I started photographing, that was definitely the case. It was important to me creating worlds into which I could also escape to a certain degree.

I experience real troubles putting my finger on your style. It’s just so versatile. Some of your pictures could be from one photographer whilst others could be from an entirely different photographer. The only thing they all have in common is their unconditional urge to be unique.

A lot of people say that. I believe they all carry a hidden handwriting of mine. I have so many interests – in my private life as well – that are often contradictory but they are all part of me. It’s a similar situation with my work and I don’t try photographing one style over and over again and instead always attempt giving something new a chance. This also has a lot to do with the fact that I get bored very easily…

A lot of your pictures, especially the earlier ones, have a distinctive theatrical feel to them and your models can be seen acting and interacting. Do you mostly come up with themes and staging whilst shooting or do you go to a shoot with a specific miseen-scène in mind?

My early work was heavily inspired by German silent films such as Fritz Lang’s and F.W. Murnau’s. I devised little stories and the models were staged like stage actors. So yes, back in the day, I developed a specific mise-

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DANIEL SANNWALD The Oldest Child Alive

en-scène including exact posture and settings.

Nowadays I work with feelings and moods to a greater extent. I still come up with themes but they are more abstract and based on emotions.

This allows me to work more intuitively on the set and to use the present moment to let ideas unfold organically.

I was asked by Interview Germany to do a beauty editorial for every issue so they wanted something almost like a column, where I was given what I believe were four pages an issue.

And I was supposed to create something relating to beauty and thought it was very exciting to create beauty digitally for this editorial. So we scanned the model using a 3D scanner and I subsequently worked with Inge Grognard, one of my favourite make-up artists, to apply the make-up digitally onto the sculpture’s surface.

You did an adaption of John Everett Millais’ famous Ophelia painting. Looking at a photograph of Ophelia’s last moments evokes emotions the original artwork doesn’t.

How important is it for you appealing to a viewer’s feelings rather than to their sheer sense of aesthetics?

Feelings are becoming increasingly important to me, a lot of which has to do with the relationship I have with my boyfriend who’s a musician.

His name is Alejandro Ghers though he’s better known as Arca. His way of writing music and how he creates his world along with his best friend Jesse Kanda has really inspired me. It’s important to them for the work not to rely on aesthetics but to tell a story and be based on strong emotions. Ever since I have been in this relationship, I have noticed how relevant these values are for me as well. Depending on the project, they are sometimes more achievable than other times but I’m currently very inspired. The great thing is we’ve all inspired one another. It’s a reciprocal learning process!

What does a typical Daniel Sannwald shoot look like?

I work in a very spontaneous way and a lot of my assistants love working with me because of that. There is no hierarchy on my set. There are photographers who build a real pyramid on their sets; where only the first assistant is allowed to directly speak to the photographer and the second assistant is not, and so on. I always treat everyone equally and see the whole thing a bit like Andy Warhol’s Factory. I’m really open and want it to be like a playground where everyone has fun and you create something together. For example, I have an assistant in New York called Pawel who really inspired me. He had his pockets full of cameras, like mobile phone ones and that kind of thing. At some point he took them out and went “hey, try this” and that’s how I started using his cameras for a while. It really is a close exchange of ideas… And lots of hip hop.

I read about that last bit somewhere before.

So who’s your favourite hip hop artist and whose music do you play on set?

Oh, that’s always different. But… …it’s always loud.

It’s always loud! It’s like a favourite colour.

It constantly changes depending on my mood and the time. For a while we listened to a lot of Frank Ocean, TINK, Rah Digga, Arca and Kendrick Lamar. Right now we’re listening to a lot of electronic beats mixed with hip hop. It depends!

I find the Fade to Grey editorial you shot for Interview Germany stunning and totally unique. What was the inspiration behind it?

So there was no real make-up?

It was all applied afterwards. There was a real make-up artist but it all happened using a computer.

Was it still about promoting specific products and did you use their colours?

Yes, it was more about colours. The texture was completely different. I don’t remember it very well but I think we took different shades of red of a number of Dior lipsticks and other make-up brands. So we took their colour pallets and digitalized them.

Some of the surfaces, shapes and colours you use in your images are quite flashy and the pictures themselves often make iconographic references. I remember seeing a religion-inspired editorial you did for Flair Italia which seemed quite gimmicky. Do you like kitsch?

I’m not afraid of kitsch. I’m not afraid of anything. I mean I’m really not. Especially at the beginning of my photographic practice, when you look at it, I wasn’t scared to make mistakes.

There are no mistakes for me. I find it enthralling risking everything and I find kitsch interesting but to me, it’s actually a kind of humor I want to put into my images. So I don’t take it 100% seriously.

So it’s not about producing kitsch in the first place but if it’s a part of it then you are by all means willing to use it. As long as it’s original.

Yes! And humorous.

You once went to Paris Fashion Week and missed the shows because you prioritized visiting the city’s aquarium. Hands down, isn’t the fashion industry quite boring in the end?

(Laughs) That’s excellent! Where did you find that?

I read it on a blog…

That’s funny. It’s true though. I’m not such a good networker. I have fun getting to know people, I’m not afraid of it. But I actually find fashion parties and events pretty boring.

Although I always go to Paris and London Fashion Week, I try to attend as little shows as possible to be honest. The same goes for the parties. I mostly find them boring so I’d rather read a children’s book or go to the aquarium. It just gives me more. I find more inspiration there that I can deploy in my work than at some party where everyone stands around with a champagne glass…

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Arena Homme, 2012

internet seem to have made photography and other art forms much less exclusive.

Doesn’t this add pressure to an established photographer? After all, you need to bring something special to the table.

Yes… The big jobs and big appointments are still offered to the big photographers. It’s never the case that a large label would be so brave to use a young talent who has lots of Tumblr followers. It doesn’t work like that. The business actually is a mafia business at the end of the day. The big photo agencies have their connections and they make sure to retain their clients.

I think it’s not easy for the new generation to get genuinely big jobs without being part of an institution. I’m not very scared to lose work to youngsters. I find it absolutely fantastic seeing there are so many creative people and also get inspired looking at Tumblr blogs and these things. There are so many talented people but unfortunately there are not that many jobs.

Technical innovations have also initiated a shift in what is fashionable and what is not. Photos of super models bathing in the seas of exotic countries, meticulously lit by an array of light sources and retouched to plastic perfection have made way for a more spontaneous representation of a new generation’s values. Today’s editorials frequently feature girl-next-door models posing with mundane objects in low-key light. Is this new style a style of the people?

Could you go into a bit more detail?

Funny enough, this makes me think of the amount of campaigns that show regular people rather than professional models.

By now, we even have an agency here in London that signs youngsters with individual style who have talent beyond looks. I think the relationship we have with people in photos has drastically changed in recent years. Back in the day, you admired Claudia

DANIEL SANNWALD The Oldest Child Alive

“my early work came from not understanding the technologies I used. In an earlier interview, I was described as a scientist! That’s something I would still like to be known as.”

As a fashion photographer, you must feel the pressure working with fashion publications. The magazines sell the clothes vice versa – therefore, both have to look their best and confirm mainstream aesthetics. Artistic freedom seems like a utopia in times of market research and sales analysis…

Yes, I find that it unfortunately becomes increasingly difficult. But at the moment, it also feels like change is coming. As you said before our interview, everything looks the same. And ever since the recession, everyone has been so careful that it really just came down to illustrating fashion without producing any magic in the images. But I think it’s currently changing and I find it exciting to see how people are once again starting to become more courageous.

It’s about image making again instead of mere product photography.

I think that even before the recession, most of the typical spreads you’ve seen in prior years were highly staged causing many frames to look somewhat forced whereas nowadays you frequently encounter a different visual language. For one, the ways models pose have become more natural and diverse. The hand on the hip won’t do it anymore. In our last issue, we ran an editorial with a girl whose hair and make-up were relatively unspectacular and who was shot in front of a climbing wall wearing designer dresses. That for example was not a cliché; it was something modern which maybe relates to our readers’ lives more directly.

A girl wearing designer clothes in front of a climbing wall? Jokes aside, I know what you mean. As you know, every movement is an antimovement to a prior one. I believe that there is a sort of minimal style that is highly demanded at the moment. A lot of photographers are starting to shoot analogue again – Jamie Hawkesworth, Tyrone Lebon – and it’s actually about creating a soul image again. Trying to capture the character of the girl instead of using her as a persona you create. When I photograph someone, I often photograph them stronger than they are. Other photographers perhaps make it a bit more personal.

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Schiffer hopping on a plane from Paris to Tokyo. Nowadays, you follow models on Instagram and they take you backstage.

Precisely. It’s got to do a lot with the internet.

You’ve basically said it all and I fully agree. I personally still love top models. For every spread, I really try to get a girl who knows what she’s doing. I prefer shooting models to non-models.

I saw that you worked with Luisa Bianchin on a Maison Martin Margiela video before.

She’s drop-dead gorgeous if you ask me.

She’s so pretty! Unbelievable. It was a funny shoot. She was shocked because at the time I always had a DJ on the set. I had a phase when I always tried having really good music at a shoot so I would call friends and book them to play music while we were shooting. And I still remember her being totally shocked. Even today, when I meet here, she goes “Daniel and his DJ!”.

She thought that was funny.

Normcore is a new phenomenon which seems to be a response of people critical of what they are sold. Buyers have realized they don’t have to stand out in order to validate their style. Although you photograph supermodels, it seems like you often address clichéd beauty standards through your images. For example, you have disintegrated and deformed the body. It’s no longer about making someone look particularly pretty but about making them look somewhat interesting.

That’s in the nature of how I’ve always worked.

I haven’t been working with really famous

girls for a long time because it’s not easy getting there as a photographer. I always liked creating my images and these surreal worlds with a person you know right away. So if you photograph Anja Rubik for example, someone looking at a magazine will recognize her but they will see that she was photographed in a new manner, a style in which you haven’t seen her before. I like that idea. To me, it’s less impactful placing an anonymous girl in a surreal world. And to be honest, the big names are always quite happy doing something a bit more creative!

You once shot Karlie Kloss and Sean O’Pry using an old Samsung phone and the pictures turned really electric and reminiscent of the 80s and 90s. They’re kind of cheap-looking but in a good way. Why did you opt for the cell phone rather than a professional camera?

That was when I was shooting in New York with this assistant Pawel who by chance had this mobile phone camera on him. Before Karlie and Sean came to the set, he went “I’ve got these cameras with me; you should have a look at them”. And without testing, I immediately said “let’s try it” so it really was super spontaneous. But we combined the pictures with Hasselblad ones and I actually found that pretty enthralling. Having one page super glossy and high resolution and the opposite one would be super low resolution.

There are talented youngsters out there who create amazing things with very restricted means and they receive a lot of attention through Tumblr and other platforms. Picture editing software and the

So what would be the role of a fashion photographer in 2014 in your opinion? What does he or she bring to a production and what is their main responsibility? I mean you regularly shoot using cheap image taking devices which is something a lot of people could potentially do.

What I liked about shooting on a phone was that it’s a comment on the fact that everyone takes pictures with their phones nowadays. And it’s a way for me to show that when I take a photo on a phone, it looks different to when you do it.

Oh, you don’t know that, do you?

Well, I don’t actually!

Interview Magazine did a Grindr-inspired editorial in 2012 where male models photographed themselves in underwear. It was an original idea but there was no photographer who got hired for their vision or expertise.

Yes, that was super cool. Someone must have had the concept so there was definitely an art director who overviewed the process. I personally feel like that’s captivating. I mean I prefer calling myself an image maker to calling myself a photographer because I would love the idea of not photographing anything and instead handing out cameras to people.

This makes me wonder: have you ever used found imagery or other objects that crossed your way in your work?

I was a big fan of the Useful Photography idea

by Kessels and Kramer. They made me realize photography doesn’t just mean taking a picture yourself; it can also refer to how you organize photos and put them into a new context. In my early work, I sometimes incorporated found footage and occasionally made it very referential to provide it with a new meaning. I do this less nowa-

days – from time to time I buy stock footage for my video works or backgrounds for my images from picture agencies like Shutterstock.

I love browsing through photos and videos.

Would you ever like to curate your own publication?

For a short period of time, there was a magazine called Under/Current here in London. I believe they had five issues and I worked as a photo editor on three of them. I thought it was great, amongst other things because I got to invite my friends to shoot for us. But my own photography is so much work at the moment; it leaves no time for something like that. So it would be a decision of either/or and in that case I prefer producing my own work.

Tell me a bit about your book Pluto & Charon.

It’s a collection of the work you had done up to that time. How did it come about?

There was this publishing house from Belgium called Ludion. They’re no longer around but they used to do a lot of fashion and art publications amongst which there was a Yohji Yamamoto book which I found quite good. And they approached me saying they’d like to do a book with me. I met up with them a couple of times and asked whether they don’t think it would be a bit too early for me. But they thought I had inspired a lot of young photographers. And I believe that nowadays you see a lot of digital manipulation in photography. Everyone does it now and loads of people do it very well and they have found their own style. But twelve years ago, there really weren’t many photographers and I was one of the few who started working with low resolution and different, digital treatments. Though other photographers like Nick Knight and Sølve Sundsbø had already been employing new digital methods, their work was still high res and super refined. In comparison, I did digital punk. And they found that intriguing and said “okay, you might still be a young photographer and you will surely continue developing but you’ve already had such a big impact on a young generation of photographers” so they wanted to publish this book on me at the time. I thought that was pretty cool.

It’s a fairly unusual thing to happen for someone to approach you and suggest making a monograph. It must have felt reassuring for you seeing someone acknowledge what you were doing at the time.

I’m a pretty insecure person. But I think that’s part of being a good artist or a good image maker… The fact that you always question yourself. I thought it was a good thing to do but I didn’t feel stronger afterwards. I still had the same doubts.

So can you talk me through the creative process? From mood boards to post-production, Daniel Sannwald style, in a few

sentences? It would be interesting knowing how much work actually goes into coming up with one of your concepts.

I’ve been photographing professionally for eight years, ever since I finished my education. I already took pictures when I was in school but a lot has changed since then. By now, I have so many jobs that I sometimes only have one day or four hours to develop and submit a concept.

It’s not like back in the day when you had the luxury of time which is why I always tell people who finish University to really enjoy and use the freedom of working on a concept for a week or two or three or even longer. I unfortunately no longer have that. It’s not rare for me to work on three or four projects a day so things really have to go super quickly. Of course it’s sometimes quite exciting having to work at a rapid pace but I often miss being able to devote myself to a project for a long time.

Do you have the feeling that this is a compromise you sometimes have to make and that you think you could have done better if you’d had more time?

Personal and profound works only function when there is a lot of time and you can reflect, try different things, take a step back, look at the work again with a bit of distance and start anew. Nowadays, with the work that I do, that’s almost not possible. So yes, sometimes I would have wished having a bit more time.

You make use of Photoshop and other programs to create unique visual effects instead of reducing them to erase spots and dimples.

If I may interrupt you there – what’s important in this context and what no one has ever written is that I didn’t have a computer for a very long time. I got my first computer when I was 26 – so it really was very, very late. I always did everything by hand, including writing. Even in University. Sometimes I used my friends’ computers and I believe that most things actually happened because I had no clue about computers. So I just tried stuff in Photoshop, not knowing how for example curves functioned.

And these things just happened and I went “oh cool, let’s keep it”. All my early work actually came from not understanding the technologies I used and just experimenting with them anyway.

So it was a learning by doing sort of scenario. Does this still apply to your current practice?

Yes. In an earlier interview, I was described as a scientist. That’s something I would still like to be known as. So to get back to your earlier question, I felt a lot more like a scientist back in the day when I had the time to do many experiments over a long period of time, for example immersing photos in different acids. I don’t have time for that sort of thing these days.

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“I notice that by now I get a lot more excited about a film project than a photogr aphy one, It’s intriguing working with time, sounds, movements and narr atives.”

This actually relates to what I was going to ask: digital technology is essential to a lot of your work but you’ve also experimented with analogue picture manipulation when you were younger. From my own experience, I know that the latter feels much more hands-on, almost like a craft. Why did you go digital?

I sometimes still photograph analogue but only very rarely, especially for editorials. That’s got to do a lot with most clients these days wanting to see and potentially even edit the pictures on the set. I know my agency would find it difficult representing a photographer who photographs analogue and telling clients they would have to wait until they could see results, meaning they couldn’t be sure the fashion has been captured in an appropriate manner. Additionally, it just makes sense using digital photography to create these hyper-realistic worlds.

So your preference towards digital photography comes from personal motives as well as industry requirements.

Exactly.

When you play with curves and liquefy body parts while retouching photos from a shoot, do you feel like Daniel the child comes out again?

Yes, it’s a little bit like a digital playground for me. These days, I have a team that does all the post production with me so I’ve gone from an alone time playground to a group one.

M.I.A album artwork, (unpublished)

You have come up with these spectacular, Dalí-like environments for short films you made for jewelry label Delfina Delettrez.

However, everything we see in them is derived from our world – it visually links to something we are familiar with. We recognize clouds but they look different, we see facial features but they are abstracted…

How far can you take this abstraction before it loses its effect?

I would first have to test it to see how far I can still push it. Do you think it only works when you can still recognize some elements?

Well, I think that’s what makes it humorous. I believe you basically decode meanings to subsequently assemble them in a different way in order to evoke the sensation of strangeness. This is of course something Dalí and many surrealists have done. And because there is still that relation to the original, to what comes from our sphere, the results appear curious. If there were no perceptible meanings left though, a viewer wouldn’t be able to tell whether something is strange or not. It would just be deemed unreal.

I see… This is actually very important to my work. And I think I’m quite referential towards the art world, the past and towards different

cultures. I use Dalí or Magritte for example and try placing them into a new context. I think that we live in a time without culture to be honest.

And I like playing with that; with bringing back the culture into a time without a real culture. I think I agree with you on what you said.

But perhaps I should try pushing the boundaries a little more at some point just to see what happens.

I always try to imagine what it would look like if Dalí had had access to Photoshop and video editing software. Would it look like something you’re doing or would he have taken it further? Have you ever seen Destino, the short film Dalí did for Disney?

Yes, of course. Funny you’re saying it though, because to be honest I only watched it very recently, about two weeks ago, for the first time.

It’s amazing! Although I think that they approached him to do a sequel to Fantasia which I thought was even cooler. At least a bit.

Speaking of films, I read somewhere that you started photographing with the goal to go into directing eventually. You’ve already done two music videos – M.I.A.’s Y.A.L.A. and John Legend’s Made To Love. I actually believe the moving image suits your style even better because it allows for more extreme and out-of-this-word visuals…

Again, funny you would say that. Because a lot of people, including friends from the fashion industry like stylists and others, tell me the same thing: that my work functions slightly better as moving image than as still imagine.

Maybe I personally don’t want to admit that at this point. Although I think that in photography, a lot of things are so nice and perfect and so far I haven’t managed implementing that in video. I would like to learn that. It’s a bit more difficult when you retouch frame by frame. It just gets very complicated and it’s much more expensive. But I find film considerably more interesting. I notice that by now I get a lot more excited about a film project than a photography one. It’s intriguing working with time, sounds, movement, narratives... I sort of resolved to learn about narratives and storytelling over the next two years. A lot of photographers have to work with the moving image these days but many of them think photographically. They haven’t really understood how to tell a story just yet. There are numerous good fashion films but I think most fashion films don’t work properly because there is no real story building up. I would like to try sticking to my aesthetics but adding the element of a narrative.

You once said Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is one of your favourite movies. Are you particularly fond of silent films? And is there a Daniel Sannwald feature film somewhere on the horizon?

Well, I find it amazing that they can captivate you so much although they are black and white as well as completely silent. That is so impressive. It’s not just Metropolis. It’s just astonishing seeing how powerful they can be and how they convey all these emotions without sounds and colours. There is this one director from Italy called Luca Guadagnino who did I Am Love with Tilda Swinton and he’s been trying to persuade me to do a movie for two years now. He told me he’d like to produce it and I said I’m not ready yet but he really calls every other month and goes “so, would you be down? I think it could be great” and I’m always like “not yet, not yet”. In a couple of years though, I would love to do it. It would be a dream.

Speaking of which, if ever you woke up during a great dream, you could probably just take an old phone and play around in Photoshop a little bit and recreate it in no time. Though perhaps you’ve done this already and there just happens to be a bit in this dream where I’m interviewing you.

Oh, that happens frequently! I have many inspiring dreams – at night as well as during the day since the borders between dream and reality often overlap for me. Some of my editorials are strongly based on visions from the world of my dreams… Sometimes it can just be an object I dreamed about, like a key or a feather. Or it could be an abstract feeling or a scene to be relived and retold whilst shooting. This past weekend, I had a strong vision of a stone from outer space which was a kind of meteorite. The next morning, my friend Delfina Delettrez called and told me she also dreamed about meteorites that night so we decided to do a spread inspired by our dreams! I’m really looking forward to it. What a great story how a dream two creative people simultaneously have can lead to a new collaboration. I strongly believe in a subconscious connection between friends dreams.

In general, I’m quite spiritual and the contact to the world of dreams as well as the energies of nature and life genuinely influence my work.

I always say the more I’m in touch with spirituality, the better my work will be.