Walter Pfeiffer - Photographer

[BerlinRocks]

Not saying his recent premiere collaborations with Condé Nast France (Vogue Paris + Vogue Homme International) pushed me to open this thread ...
But ...



Walter Pfeiffer is known for his boys images ... more than anything else ...

A contemporary of Nan Goldin, Billy Name and Larry Clark, and a forerunner of Wolfgang Tillmans, Heinz Peter Knes and Ryan McGinley, Walter Pfeiffer turned the everyday into a visual diary with his candid photographs, creating a free-spirited playground for his circle of friends and models. His point-and-shoot visions of youth, beauty and sexual identity—usually with a homoerotic bent—introduced a bold and controversial aesthetic.

Walter's first major art break came with the seminal 1974 group show Transformer, a title borrowed from Lou Reed's gender-bending album of 1972. Walter's contribution were photos of Carlo, a transsexual whom Walter photographed as both male and female. This was to become the Walter's genre, not unlike the Factory superstars of the 60s or the Club 371 kids of the South Bronx whom Jamel Shabazz immortalized in the 80s.

Walter's first book, titled simply Walter Pfeiffer, hit the scene in 1980. Its kinky cover of a Ken doll with one hand thrust into his underwear set the tone for the then-shocking images inside: hustler-looking boys cruising each other, drag queens at play, and barely-legal types hanging out, occasionally undressing for the camera. These were mixed with random film stills, landscapes and images of Walter's cats (a recurring theme)—all captured in Walter's signature in-your-face, tongue-in-cheek style.

Yet, although hugely influential, Walter Pfeiffer’s photography remained a relatively well-kept secret for a good thirty years. But that began to change in 2007, when i-D contacted him for an interview, resulting in a twelve-page fashion spread. Around the same time, Tom Ford would have his portrait for Vanity Fair be taken only by Walter and even sent a Bentley to retrieve him. That picture of Tom at home, robe-clad against an Andy Warhol screenprint, marked a mainstream triumph for Walter.

Recently, as I also live in Zurich, I summoned the courage to call the fearless sexagenarian. Although busy with an upcoming retrospective at Fotomusueum Winterthur and preparing a major shoot involving hunks in trunks in the Swiss Alps, he picked up. Two days later we met at the University of the Arts in Zurich, where he teaches evening classes in drawing. Let me now introduce you to the weird and wonderful world of Walter Pfeiffer.

Walter on...

His personal dress code
For twenty years Walter has adamantly worn one outfit per week, throughout the week, no matter what. "Otherwise I would forever be worrying what to wear. Every Monday is a new start."

Working with amateurs
"I love shooting good-looking friends, ideally first-timers fresh from school."

Getting a daily dose of erotica
He swears by it.

Agyness Deyn
In February, Walter shot Agyness Deyn for the May issue of i-D. How did it go? Agyness had an eye problem, says Walter, so the shoot was repeatedly postponed. And instead of a day, he got three hours. Still, she was a trooper and Walter garnered one of the six cover shots.

Fashion crises
When i-D sent boxes of designer clothes for last year's Couples issue, "I was literally on my knees,“ recalls Walter‚ “begging my friends to pose for me and help me out with the styling.“ They came through. "i-D were bargaining for a sandwich," he chuckles, "I delivered a 12-course meal."

His approach
"I don't want to always deliver, deliver, deliver. It needs to be easy, easy, easy. Fun, fun, fun. If it becomes too much, I'll quit. I want to deliver what's fun to do."

The not-so-swinging Swiss Sixties
"I was one of the first Swiss hippies," claims Walter, who no doubt startled the good people of Beggingen, the tiny village in the north where he grew up. In this photo, Walter is hanging out at Zurich's first hippie convention in 1968, wearing an outfit he made in art school. Later, a keen fan of French chanteuse and André Courrèges model Françoise Hardy, young Walter worked space-age chic, walking the mean streets of Zurich in a prissy white pantsuit.

Clockwork Switzerland
While at art school in Zurich, Walter's unerring eye for style landed him a job as a buyer for GLOBUS department store, which involved frequent trips to London. Yet each time Walter presented his latest Carnaby Street finds, the reply was: Great, but it won't work here. GLOBUS finally sacked him in 1971. Walter says he then eked out a living painting film posters and illustrating for the visionary German lifestyle magazine Twen. He stumbled into photography by taking polaroids of his friends to use for these drawings. Before long he replaced his brush and pencil with a point-and-shoot camera.

His cats
"My cats have always enjoyed a jolly good life with me,“ he purrs. Indeed, cats feature prominently in his work.

Video
Walter discovered video in 1977. Well into the Eighties, Walter would regularly film and direct home videos starring "friends and pets." As usual, the main intention was to dress up and have a laugh. These videos remained private until 1998, when a DVD compilation, again simply called Walter Pfeiffer, came out. It's almost impossible to come by now.

His idols
Walter cites Cecil Beaton, Manolo Blahnik and John Galliano as his idols, because of their personal style and sartorial flair, while back in the day it was French couturier André Courrèges, as well as U.S. fashion designer Ken Scott, whose exuberant floral prints were all the rage in the '60s and '70s.

Heidi Klum's catchphrase
"The outs of yesterday are the ins of tomorrow."

Coming out of the closet
"Everything went wrong, but I survived."

His dream shoot
"I'd like to shoot Podolski." Lukas Podolski—gasp, sputter—the German soccer star? "Yes. He looks so gorgeous, don’t you think? I want to shoot him at Bayern Munich. I just talked to Vanity Fair Germany about it."

hint mag - 12 april 2008

images sources : hotshoeinternational / artkunst.cz / hintmag
including the cover of his book Night & Day and a flyer for an exhibition in Switzerland

 

[BerlinRocks]

Walter Pfeiffer's 1970-1980 portfolio

A re-edition of the original cult book of well known Swiss photographer Walter Pfeiffer. This photographic projet, entirely composed by the artist in 1980 with full page sequences of images and no text, led to the discovery of Pfeiffer's work in Polaroid which the public turned into a sort of underground icon.

« In his earliest work Pfeiffer can be seen in relation to Larry Clark, as a photographer who not only captures but implicates himself in the restless ’70s, and yet Pfeiffer’s irreverent sense of humor sets him apart [ … ] Walter Pfeiffer’s work both anticipated and paralleled that of the ’80s photographers and, in so doing, looked ahead to much of what followed. So it would be possible to see his pictures laid end to end as a secret thread to the present.» —Bob Nickas (Artforum)

« Le livre culte et introuvable est réédité … » —Têtu

« A visual aesthetic developed in the ’70s which became common language in the art world … » —Self Service

« Une œuvre méconnue et pourtant voisine de celle de Larry Clark … » —Les Inrockuptibles

« Vorläufer und Kult » —Aargauer Zeitung

Walter Pfeiffer's The Plaza / Kawasaki Cut / Music for Millions DVD
see a preview here : http://www.bureaudesvideos.com/bdv/php/pr_hi.php?m=pfeiffer

Walter Pfeiffer started photography in the 70's without any technical ambition, but the will to provide a new visual vocabulary for beauty, erotism and freedom of life. His work gaining its initial recognition through an underground network has reached today status of a cult object.

Parallel with his photos exploring the sexualisation of the everyday, Walter PFeiffer directed few videos depicting the Zurich scene of his friends hanging out in his studio. For the very first time thoses rare and funny little plays are compiled in a DVD. It is the occasion to reassess Pfeiffer's pioneered position within contemporary art and culture at large.

les presses du réel
images include preview of 1970-1980 and poster of the DVD

 

[BerlinRocks]

Vogue Hommes International, SS 2009

Chambre 69 styled by Beat Bollinger
scanned by greyeyes

 

[BerlinRocks]

Vogue Paris, May 2009

Cherchez la femme
Eva Herzigova styled by Anastasia Barbieri




scanned by Diorette

 

[BerlinRocks]

Walter Pfeiffer: In Love With Beauty

An underground classic for years, Walter Pfeiffer has developed a unique blend of eroticism and wit, classical serenity and ornamental playfulness, artifice and immediacy.


FOTOMUSEUM Winterthur presents an unprecedented chronological overview of Pfeiffer’s photographic work, spanning four decades from his beginnings in the early 1970s to his most recent work.

Initially a painter, draughtsman and graphic designer, Walter Pfeiffer started to use photographs as aide-memoirs while working on large-scale photorealist pencil drawings in the early 1970s. But soon Pfeiffer developed a genuine passion for photography. Stimulated by a cast of handsome drifters and stylish women, his very own personal Warhol-inspired “Factory”, he began to carve out his trademark style that testifies to both his desire for timeless beauty and his precise observation of the permutations of fashion and style. His breakthrough as a photographer was a series of images of a young man in drag that was included in Jean-Christophe Amman’s seminal “Transformer” exhibition in 1974.

In 1981, he published his book “Walter Pfeiffer”, whose cheeky eroticism and raw immediacy was in perfect tune with the Punk / Wave movement. For most of the 1980s, Pfeiffer embarked on a quest for male beauty that culminated in “Das Auge, die Gedanken, unentwegt wandernd”, a 1986 series of b/w close-up portraits of young men, whose elegant reduction was the result of years of study and experimentation.

Subsequently, Pfeiffer dedicated himself to drawing for a number of years, only to return to photography in the late 1990s. In 2001, he published “Welcome Aboard”, an overview of recent and past photographs, which proved that he has remained as youthful and exuberant as ever.

This autumn Walter Pfeiffer was awarded the Grand Prix Design 2008 from the Swiss Confederation.

Walter Pfeiffer
In Love with Beauty

Date: 29 Nov - 15 Feb 2009
Opening hours: Tue-Sun 11-18, Wed 11-20

Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstr. 44+45
8400 Winterthur
Switzerland

www.fotomuseum.ch

various images
sources : photoicon / rmc.fr / actuphoto / dashwoodbooks / plusjoe.blogspot.com

 

[Diorette]

Vogue Paris June / July 2009 (HQs)

30 Avenue Montaigne
Photographed by Walter Pfeiffer
Styled by Anastasia Barbieri
Model: Magdalena Frackowiak



scanned by Diorette

 

[cecil]

i seem to prefer his older works. all great!

 

[BerlinRocks]

WALTER PFEIFFER

INTERVIEW BY BOB (ROBERT) NICKAS

Walter Pfeiffer has been chasing beauty for almost 40 years now, making pictures that are as much a product of his obsessions as of his precision. Maybe it’s the sense of Swiss order that has influenced the Zurich-based photographer to set up his scenes, direct his models, and compose his pictures so perfectly. But it’s also his need to tease something sexy out of the everyday. The secret to his work’s seductive charm is his playful humor and his wayward, endless curiosity. Walter uses his camera to promiscuously record the world around him. Little known for many years outside of Europe, Pfeiffer’s work has appeared more regularly in magazines, his own photo books, and exhibitions alongside photographers who share his more libidinal sensibility—Ryan McGinley, Jack Pierson, and Wolfgang Tillmans. A long-overdue retrospective opens in November in Winterthur, Switzerland, accompanied by a comprehensive book compiled by Pfeiffer.

Vice: So, what beautiful girls and boys have you been chasing around with your camera lately?

Walter Pfeiffer: Oh, so many, you know, because I have to work all the time. Today I was location scouting for i-D magazine. The only thing I want to do for them is very tight underwear.


Always the tightest and the whitest.

Yeah. I said, please look for the tightest.

What are you working on now?

I’m very busy because of this retrospective. I’ll be filling up the whole Fotomuseum in November.

In Winterthur?

Yes. We’re still looking through the work since ’71 and we’re only now up to 1982. It’s so huge! I never look through my negatives, and it’s so strange if somebody else does it for you. You see so many pictures and you think, “Oh, is it really good?”

When people work with you it’s more like they’re a fan of yours than a curator or an editor. They want to see more and more.

That’s how it is at the moment. If you work a lot you don’t see correctly—I mean, I see correctly looking back to the 70s because it’s so far away—but the new things I don’t see. Every day I develop new film and I just put it away.

You don’t look at the pictures?

Not right away.

One thing that’s interesting to me is how, when you sequence books and install shows, you often put a picture from the 70s or 80s next to one that you’ve taken more recently, and somehow they work together. It doesn’t look like an older picture next to a new one. There’s a continuity to the way you look at the world, to the way you arrange the world for your camera.

My view of the world is always the same. I have the same desire now as then.

Your work is very much about desire, and you’ve always managed to find models who are real people, long before this was a trendy fashion approach.

Sometimes I’ll take an oldie—an old star, someone I’ve shot already—and even if they may not have the style I want anymore, they might surprise me. In my case there’s such a small time when they are in bloom. It lasts maybe two years when they’re really at their peak.

What do you mean they’re “at their peak?” Like, they have a certain look and then they lose it?

It’s like May. It doesn’t last long. But sometimes I get them to ask someone I’m interested in if I can take their picture.

It sounds like you get them to pimp their friends.

Yes, yes, that’s because at my age it’s humiliating to ask.

Humiliating?

A little bit. Sometimes it works when I ask, but I’m so afraid of them saying no because it’s so embarrassing.

I would think that as the years go by, the rejection would be easier because you’ve been doing it for so long. And also because you’re gentle and charming. You’re not very threatening to them. I think you play that up too: “Oh, I’m so innocent.”

Sometimes I say, “Oh, why don’t you bring your friends?” Or I see somebody with them and I’ll say, “He’s so nice. Bring him.”

You refer to your models as your “stars.”

Yes, absolutely, but you know stars. I always say, “I’m Mr. Walter Goldwyn Pfeiffer.”

[laughs] Like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer—MGM. I know you love old Hollywood, the beauty and glamour and movies and music from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. In a way, you’re bringing this kind of glamour from the past into the present.

It comes from when I was growing up. I had a simple life and we didn’t have much money. We didn’t even have a TV, but I could buy all those German movie magazines. When we went through everything for the retrospective, I discovered a notebook from when I was 14. There was a story where I talk about everything in my room. It’s funny because it’s mostly pictures of German stars.

So you’ve been starstruck since you were a teenager?

Yes.

And you’re still kind of a teenager.

Maybe. I think it’s because when I was really young I didn’t have many friends. I was kind of a loner. I thought, in the 80s, when I had to have many boys for this boy book...

Your book called The eyes, the thoughts, ceaselessly wandering?

Yes, that book. I thought that maybe I would go through a second childhood.

Did you have a rich fantasy life when you were a teenager?

Yes, because nobody told me about sex or anything.

They didn’t tell you about the birds and the bees?

No, they didn’t tell me about that. When I had my apprenticeship I didn’t even know what to learn. I always wanted to learn how to draw and hated exercise and sports. I was always really afraid when we had to climb up the rope in school because I couldn’t climb it. I did everything wrong and the coach hated me.

You have all these young models now who pose for you and you don’t even have to pay them because it’s fun for them and they enjoy being around you. You have more friends now than you could’ve had when you were 14. So it’s kind of a great revenge.

You say “revenge,” really? I don’t think about that much… I can’t stop.

This idea of not being able to stop—and I don’t mean this in a negative way because obviously it drives your work—it’s clear that you’re kind of obsessed.

Yeah, I’m obsessed. For example, Sunday is the only day I don’t work. So I go out in the country. The time now is right to walk in the mountains. It’s very strange. Earlier this year I lost my way but I came into a very typical Swiss scene. It was dusk, and I saw two boys embracing each other, and then they began to fight. The one who ends up on his back is the loser. It’s an old Swiss tradition, and there is a big fiesta with these fights. And they’re so classic and archetypical.

If you take pictures while hiking in the mountains, you understand that the mountains have always been there, and always will be. It’s the same with the ocean. But you’re also photographing young kids—people in the prime of their life. It makes me think of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray. As long as you keep painting the picture—or in your case, taking the picture—your subject will stay young and beautiful forever. So you’re trying to do the impossible.

It is impossible, absolutely. When I see models 20 years after I’ve photographed them, I say, “Ohhh, what happened?”

But what’s great is that you have both people in one body. You have the person in front of you, the older person, and also the image of the younger person in your mind.

You know, for the opening they will all be there—I hope.

It’s clear that a lot of your photographs have been set up or staged. You pose the people, you choose the background, scout locations. On one hand, your pictures seem very real—they’re a reflection of reality and very direct—but somehow we’re also aware that you’ve totally composed the picture. It’s like you’re setting up “real” pictures.

When it’s winter and I can’t get out, I have to set up here in my four walls. Then I just have the wall and I have to think of something where they’re not posing too much, not reacting too much. I have to make it so that they don’t realize the camera is there. In the summer, I mostly go out and I’ll see a nice surrounding and then we go there.

Here’s an idea for you: Up in the mountains you have all these big ski resorts, and they have heated outdoor pools. It’s so cold in the winter that you can see the steam rising off of the water. Take pictures there.

Once, I had four wonderful boys and I thought we would make some shower pictures, and I was so stupid because I forgot that the water was too hot and the steam fogged the camera. Another time, I brought film to develop at the lab and they never gave it back.

You mean that the people who processed your film thought you’d taken dirty pictures?

Yeah, they said there was no film there.

I would think today there’s probably not a picture that you’d take that wouldn’t be printed. Today, you can sit in front of a computer and see the most incredible hardcore images. All these years later, your pictures still have a kind of innocence to them.

It’s not just, “Take off the clothes and let me shoot you naked.” That would be boring.

You always hide a little bit, which seems like a great way to deal with sexy pictures. There’s one I love where this kid is almost completely naked, he’s sitting down, and over his crotch he’s holding a plate with a fish. It’s very sexy, even if you don’t like fish.

No, I like fish. Without the plate it would just be a boy sitting on the sofa.

Well, that’s something else you do. You put a lot of humor into your pictures. The aspect of the picture being fun and lighthearted is a big part of your work.

I love to have fun. All my models like to be photographed and like to have fun when we shoot. It’s my way of working. When I have new models, maybe the first time they’re a little bit shy, but the second time it’s easier. You have to get into them, you have to make them lose themselves. After I’m done, I’m really finished because of all the tension... When I’m finished I’m gone. I’m really out of control. [laughs]

(....)

 

[BerlinRocks]

A while ago you sent me some pictures from a shoot that was supposed to be in Butt magazine. It was a hockey team in their dressing room, putting on their uniforms, with all their gear around. They were great pictures but the magazine wouldn’t run them because they said the boys were straight.

Yes, and I never ask if someone is gay or not. That’s never been my problem. Even in the 70s, when the first real beauties came, I just selected them because of their beauty, not their sexuality. Even a boy who was very, very masculine and beautiful, he said to me ten years later—maybe he wasn’t the brightest boy—he said, “Oh, I didn’t know that you were gay.” It was never a problem. Nobody mentioned it. I was really depressed when Butt didn’t use those pictures because they were good and the boys had a good time. And then they tell me, “The boys aren’t gay, so we can’t print the pictures.”

You told me that when you went to buy the underwear for that shoot you wanted the cheapest and the smallest you could find, even though they’re pretty big guys on the hockey team!

Yeah, I bought the cheapest because I had to pay for it myself, and, as always, the smallest size. And they were really well built—beautiful ***es. They had great fun, and maybe I’ll use them again for something new.

You should definitely use them. Now, you don’t only photograph boys. Your last book was a little bit of a surprise. You did a book called Cherchez la Femme. There were a few boys in the book, and some couples, but it was almost all women. Where did that idea come from?

I have many pictures of women—women are always around me. I have muses everywhere. Boys and girls who give me ideas. My publisher said, “Why don’t we make a book out of it?” So that was the start. But the next book will go back to the roots.

Back to the roots? [laughs] Very funny.

My idea is like a telephone book or a kind of biography. I have so many things for my retrospective catalog. We went through the fan mail from the 60s and 70s.

You used to get fan mail?

I kept everything. I have everything in boxes because before this stupid email I always wrote letters to everybody and they wrote me back. I want to package it in a good style. We have to stay cool—you know what I mean? Not hot. When I do things I want to be cool.

When you started taking pictures, who were some of the photographers you admired?

Oh, the classic ones. When I went to art school I always sat in the library and looked through Harper’s Bazaar and I was impressed by all those photographers in the 40s—George Platt Lynes, Horst P. Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, Herbert List—because I knew I could never do it in this way.

When you were younger did you study photography?

No, because I was so afraid of the camera. I never touched a camera because of my shaky hands.

So you’re self-taught as a photographer?

I started with a Polaroid, but not thinking I was a photographer. The first photograph I did was with my sister and my girlfriend at home and I just started to direct them. I realized that I love to direct people.

In the 80s and 90s were you aware of Nan Goldin and Wolfgang Tillmans?

When my first book came out in 1980, I had a big fan—my first fan—and he told me that I should look at Nan Goldin’s pictures because she did stuff like me. But it kind of hurt a little bit because at the time nobody wanted me. I didn’t want to think about it too much because it was at a time when nobody cared for me.

If you think about Nan Goldin and Larry Clark, the pictures that made them famous made them famous because they’re good pictures, but also because they’re sensationalistic. I don’t think you’ve ever once in your life made a sensationalistic picture. Yours is such a different aesthetic—it doesn’t immediately grab people in a visceral way. A lot of the photos that made Nan Goldin famous are kind of pitiless. Pictures of people who are obviously going through very difficult times. Same thing with the early Larry Clark pictures. These people are suffering and they’re messed up. The pictures aren’t very flattering for all the obvious reasons. You’ve never taken pictures like that. You’ve never taken pictures of losers.

Yes, it’s true. That’s why I didn’t want to know too much about other photographers. I was in London when I first saw Tillmans. It was at the Serpentine Gallery in ’95. I was really depressed because he was so good. It was the beginning of a new era.

You told me that at the time you saw the exhibition, you had just bought a new camera. You were walking through the park, thinking about his pictures, and you wanted to throw the camera in the lake.

But I didn’t.

It’s clear that people discovered you, and rediscovered you, in recent years, and now they want you. I think it’s important to point out how your pictures correspond to what’s come up in fashion photography and in photography in general. You were way ahead of your time. And I think if you’re ahead of your time you can only be discovered later. People have to catch up.

Yeah, slowly they’re catching up. And it’s so fun because it’s a new generation—30 or even younger. They look at things differently. My generation would always say, “Oh, no, it’s so awful. It’s nothing.” And now, with the young ones, like the young students, it’s so nice to see acceptance finally.

In the 70s, people didn’t respond well to your pictures?

Unfortunately, you didn’t see my first photographic show in 1974. In the middle of the gallery there was a table, and you could look at photos I had made of boys doing the same things over and over—like Muybridge’s motion photos. I put the photos on a background with tissues that had the same color as the photos. It looked good. That was my first solo show. The gallery was owned by a girl who, after my show, or maybe two shows later, she killed herself.

Did you sell any photographs?

No. [laughs] I put them in my basement, some I destroyed—I am so stupid—but I did keep some. There are some beautiful pictures, I’ll tell you.

Well, put them in your retrospective.

Yes, I will do.

Karlheinz Weinberger is the other notorious Zurich photographer, working many years before you, and only recently becoming well known for his pictures of wild motorbike teens. When did you first see his pictures, and what did you think of them?

When I was in my teens I saw a magazine called Der Kreis, and his photos were published there under his pseudonym, “Rico.”

What was Der Kreis?

It means “The Circle.” It was a little magazine from the 30s that ran until the mid-60s. They had kitschy stories and photos, Cocteau-like drawings—no p*rno, very arty, very 50s... before my time. When I actually saw Karlheinz’s photos, it was later at his museum show, and I remembered those photos from Der Kreis and I was so proud that somebody in the same country was working in the same field before me. When I had a show after the Welcome Aboard! book came out, he came to my opening and later sent me a present—a photo with a **** in a boxing glove. He said he was inspired by the photo of the boxer in my book.

Of the photographers working now, who do you like?

I think Ryan McGinley works so much now. I saw a show of his in a gallery recently, and there were so many pictures where I thought, “I want to do this picture too.”

You want to copy some of his pictures?

Yes. [laughs]

I don’t think he would mind.

I love this one photo where there are a bunch of boys under a waterfall. He’s perfect at casting.

And, like you, at directing. But you have many waterfalls in Switzerland too. They’re cold but you’ve got them.

Yes, I said today to a boy, “This summer we have to go to the mountains. I want rocks and nudes. I want to go up in the mountains, tell your brother.” They are two brothers who are very beautiful, so classical. But the waterfalls are so cold that I can’t put them under. It comes directly from the glacier, so nobody will do it. We have to look for other ideas. The ideas are coming because I always look for different surroundings.

I know you like to hike.

Yes, I love to hike, always to new places. I don’t like to have the same hike twice. It’s more interesting to try new paths. There are so many left to travel.

I was talking before about your sense of humor and how you photograph a lot of nudes. You also like to photograph statues, which is a classical way of dealing with the figure in photography.

Oh, I love it. I was in Paris once, and I went to the Louvre one evening. Unfortunately, you can’t take photos in the museum, but I made one from behind. People always look at statues and photograph them from the front—nobody ever goes behind.

Often when photographers take pictures of statues, they’re very serious, very sober. But with yours, it’s almost like somehow you get the statue to perform for you.

Even in the building in this famous museum it’s forbidden to take a photo, and I snuck one. But a guard saw me. He said, “Please give me the film.” But I wouldn’t. I said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” I know it’s not allowed but sometimes you have to play to get what you want.

My favorite signs in the museum, and you see them all the time—and think about this in relation to being a photographer—are the ones that say “Photography is not allowed.”

When I was a teen I went to many, many movies. It was like my religion back then. You often had a Swedish film, let’s say The Silence by Ingmar Bergman. There was a poster in the window and they would have a sign that said “For this film we cannot display any photos.” I asked a friend who worked at the movie theater, “Oh, please give me this sign. This is so good.” Even with women they had black bars over the breasts. When you see the bars, of course it’s something taboo, so it makes you wonder about it more.

You’ve worked for a long time, and now you’re going to have a retrospective and a big catalog. Your first, long-out-of-print 1970-1980 book was republished a few years ago. After all of this, do you still consider yourself an amateur?

There is a magazine called Fantastic Man. I always had this dream, “Oh, I want to be in Fantastic Man. Am I too bad for Fantastic Man?” Last year they asked me to do some pictures for them. So I went out with my models and said, “OK, boys. Let’s do it.” We went up on a hill and there were big clouds, and the boys took their hats and threw them in the air. Every time an airplane flew through the picture their hats were in the sky, in the clouds. I sent the pictures to the magazine and they said, “We can’t use them because they’re very blurred. The pictures turned out great but we can’t use them.” We had good fun, but I forgot to put on the flash. I don’t think that they’re too blurry. You can see everything. Maybe it’s not high-style enough for them. So my career at Fantastic Man was finished before it began.

I’m of the opinion that the best artists stay, in some way, amateurs.

Yeah, I’ll stay that way. I try hard, but we’ll see... I don’t want to lose it. I’m still looking for love... but now I know more.

viceland

 

[BerlinRocks]

some images

same source

 

[flyme2themoon]

Vogue China January 2010
The Princess Diary
Model: Edita Vilkeviciute
Photographer: Walter Pfeiffer
Stylist: Anastasia Barbieri





Source: Scanned by kazaf

 

[montrealm]

Love it, I know there is alot of editorial similar but Camilla Akrans «wild orchid» with MCB is very similar to Cherchez la femme, anyone else has noticed?

 

[pipoca]

Barney's S/S 2010 Catalogue
"The Domestic"
Ph: Walter Pfeiffer
Model: Constance Jablonski

barneys.com via Fini

 

[pipoca]

barneys.com via Fini

 

[Darling_Myy]

magazine: Vogue Hommes International spring / summer 2010
editorial: Chromo Zone
photographer: Walter Pfeiffer
styling: Hannes Hetta
models: Francisco Lachowski, Jakob Hybholt, Julius Beckers, Nikola Jovanovic


thefashionisto.com via Flashbang

 

[scratchBOOK]

he needs more work tbh... his style is like Terry's but in quirky/weird/whatever way

 

[NUTSIES]

i just discovered that he has been shooting since the 70/80s

on other threads people are calling his style pseudo-terry richardson..

i like his editorial in Another Magazine s/s 11, i dont know how to put pictures so im just going to give the post link

http://forums.thefashionspot.com/showpost.php?p=8741671&postcount=71

 

[NUTSIES]

he also did a campaign for Pringle of Scotland S/S 11

http://forums.thefashionspot.com/showpost.php?p=8466001&postcount=1

but the first picture reminds me too much of juergen teller

 

[VogueGirl8910]

Vogue China August 2011
"The New Force"
Model: Milou van Groesen
Photographer: Walter Pfeiffer
Stylist: David Vandewal


Scanned by Aja Mok

 

[MartiniKiss]

i-D Pre-Fall 2012
party all night sleep all day have a pizza (10 pages)
Photographer: Walter Pfeiffer
Styling: Elgar Johnson
Hair: Tina Outen
Make-up: Laura Dominique
Preview


fmmodelagency.blogspot.com