PHOTOGRAPHY

Ich / Me, Hamburg, 2011, Foto / Photo: Andreas Hirsch

Photography was my first love, followed at little later by literature. Starting to take pictures in the early 1970-ies and having my own darkroom a few years later led to a short period of working as a press photographer around 1980. I portrayed Austrian actors like Ulli Maier and Hans-Peter Heinzl or the writer Helmut Zenker and reported from performances like the one by Karel Dudesek’s group Minus-Delta-t. I recall Manfred Klimek helping me develop the films from my first professional assignment in his grandmother’s bathroom. In my personal work I focused on people, urban situations and landscapes.

After beginning with my father’s Kodak Retina Camera using mostly the Kodachrome 64 and his Zeiss Super Ikonta with rolls of Ilford HP5, I gradually moved on to the Yashica II SLR, Minox and finally Nikon F3, Leica M2 and Contax TVS-II, later accompanied by the Canon Power Shot Pro 1, the Nikon D80 and the Olympus Pen EP-2.

Nowadays I create conceptual series of images or pairs of images as well as follow up on certain motives that interest me like “People with Camera”, “Encounter Art”, “Flowers” or “Landscapes”. I have photographed in many European countries and Russia, on several islands of the Mediterranean – including Sardegna, Ischia and Malta – as well as in China, Brazil, the US and in Maghreb Countries like Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt.

Exhibition 99+1 Photographs

Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreashirsch/