Musée Magazine Issue No. 13 - Women | Page 21

CANDIDA HÖFER room to breathe MUSÉE: Why do you shoot interiors and not exteriors? What is it about the inside of buildings that draws you to them? CANDIDA HÖFER: Sometimes I do exteriors. I don’t follow any dogma. Exteriors are vast. Interiors are just more concentrated. That is what draws me in. MUSÉE: What is it about photography that makes you keep doing it? CANDIDA: I just like making images. For me, photography is the best way to make images. MUSÉE: How do you take a ‘portrait’ of a space? What is it about your approach that makes these images portraits? CANDIDA: Experience has taught me which positions I like to take. I go into the space, I take a photograph, and then I go into the lab and look at the print. I work on the image until I feel it is right; then the ‘portrait’ is ready. MUSÉE: Why do you (occasionally) choose to use sculptures of people in your photographs, but not people? CANDIDA: I am not quite sure what sculptures you are referring to, perhaps The Burghers of Calais? This was a project in which I wanted to show how the sculptures have been placed into different settings and how they related to those settings. It was not about people looking at them. MUSÉE: You completed a photo series in the 1970’s of habituated spaces that focused on patterned wallpaper but included people; for instance, one is of what appears to be a dining room and another is of a restaurant. What are the origins of this series and why haven’t you done a similar project? CANDIDA: I am not sure that I focused on the wallpaper. I know I tried to focus on the people – Turkish workers in Germany – and their environment, living rooms, restaurants, shops. In the course of this project, I realized two important things: that I feel uneasy when I intrude upon people and how important the physical spaces in which people meet are to me. MUSÉE: How do you choose whether to shoot analogue or digital? Does your preference go in phases or does it vary from space to space? CANDIDA: It varies from camera to camera. Now that digital cameras have reached such an exceptional quality, I almost exclusively use digital cameras. MUSÉE: You show incredible attention to small architectural details that indicate familiarity with the subject. Have you studied architecture or have you just learned how to look at a room through your photography? CANDIDA: I have always been interested in architecture. The rest is the medium: photography allows us to look at the details. MUSÉE: By removing people, you remove timestamps, such as clothes that could date the photographs. Was this something that was calculated or did that sense of timelessness emerge organically from your exclusion of people? Portrait by by Ralph Müller. All images courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York. 19