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.
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