I clearly remember the day this picture was taken. It was 26 December 2004. I was driving to Bavaria to take photographs after spending Christmas with my then girlfriend and my mother, and it was snowing. I spotted these people standing on the hill and thought it might be interesting. I set up my large format camera, stood in the same spot for about two hours and took four frames – large format film is expensive and sometimes you need to wait a long time until it is perfect. Although, what is perfect is very subjective of course. For me, it is when an image has a feeling of possibility. Another frame of the four became the cover of my book Heimat. About 13 years ago, I also made an edition of this shot, which has the same kind of feeling. So this one is in fact my second best shot.
The emotion I have when I look at an image is totally different from the emotions when I shoot. I was standing there waiting for the scene, freezing, worried I might have snowflakes on the lens. I was wearing gloves which make it difficult to operate the camera. Shooting is a totally concentrated process, like meditation – you can’t think of anything else. It’s like when you play table tennis: you are not thinking about winning or what it feels like to win, it’s only the next ball that’s important.
My work is project-based – I figure out how far I can go with one visual idea. My previous project was about Asian mega-cities, but then I became a professor of photography in Bremen and couldn’t get away as easily. So the challenge was to do something in Germany that was beautiful without being critical of beauty, which is what a lot of photographers were doing then. I spent two years travelling to spots in the mountains and at the seaside, constructing images with my camera in a similar way to painters who would construct their landscapes with a camera obscura.
I am inspired by very dull German documentary images, and by Flemish and British landscape painters, but I wanted to do something intelligent that also allows a sense of beauty, like the American photographers Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld. The concept of this image is not far from Constable – of depicting modern creatures in the landscape – except no one is working here, they’re going on holiday. The red Gore-Tex jackets are not something you would want to see when looking for a beautiful view of the landscape – but without them the image would be boring. That’s the dialectic behind it.
I have published 23 City Diaries, from Belfast to Bangkok. They have a certain quality that is difficult to describe – some people might find them pretty dull but I think they’re also funny. I have a classical approach to framing the landscape: it’s an idea of how the space of the city feels and how it relates to you emotionally when you look at it – like Daguerre’s photograph of the shoeshiner and his customer on Rue du Temple in Paris.
Photography is my way of negotiating with the outside world in order to not go mad. It’s nothing to do with escapism, it’s more to do with trying to bring together things in my head to make a visual comment – to study the possibilities in the outside world.
Peter Bialobrzeski’s CV
Born: Wolfsburg, Germany, 1961
Trained: Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen; London College of Printing
Influences: “US and British colour photographers such as Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld, Mitch Epstein, Paul Graham, Tom Wood, Martin Parr and Jem Southam. Landscape painters including Caspar David Friedrich and William Turner”
High point: “Being able to see the world at other people’s expense; meeting likeminded photographers at festivals and exhibitions”
Low point: “Being frustrated because your mind and thoughts are always three steps ahead of your creative abilities and skills.”
Top tip: “Keep going in spite of knowing that you will never get there. It is fun being on the road”
