ラール・ピルマン
Lars PILLMANN
For Lars Pillmann there was never an alternative to photography in his life. At the age of 14 he was already a winner of the German Youth Photo Prize and did everything he could to turn his passion into his profession. His travels to Asia and the US confirmed his way of working: He's got a journalistic approach. Like a documentary photographer he chooses the moment and the right framing. If possible, he works with only one light source because, as he says, there is only one sun.
He loves foreign countries and cultures, contact with people. No matter whether model, actor or other personalities, Lars Pillmann is interested in the person itself and the story behind it that he photographs. Nothing ever seems artificial in his photographs, rather simple.
Art, especially modern art, influences his work. He was particularly impressed by the Nouveau Réalisme. Be it Yves Klein with his love of experimentation or Martial Raysse with his portraits.
In 2002, he moved from Hamburg to Paris and has since been inspired by the multifaceted life in the French capital - The architecture, the heaviness, the pomposity and of course the beauty of the city and its people. In 2014 he moved to Berlin.
Berlin has changed his view. Back to his country suddenly more seemed to be possible, there was more tolerance, more freedom for him and in his work. Here he began his photo and video work on teenagers in their private rooms. And so, the circle is now complete. Lars Pillmann was a teenager when he realized how his own life should look like.
" The human being experiences what is due to him only in his first youth in all its sharpness and freshness, until the thirteenth, fourteenth year, and from this he feeds his whole life".
I was particularly interested in this time window when I began to portray young people in their private cosmos in Berlin: their room. In places where the inner world of young people meets external influences, where one can look at one's own life unvarnished and honest, sensitive and quiet, I captured three of these teens from Berlin with their Western view of family, politics and future with my camera.
And only shortly after this initial teenage period they do become youngexpression and tools for finding identity - this generation naturally reaches out and feels enriched by what connects them, and not frightened by what distinguishes them.
And yet there are differences between West and East that brings the digital age, seem to intensify or even become visible: Young people who are drawn to the arcades, the manga -cult, the emoji language. Seen from a Western perspective, the young people appear more playful, even more integrated in class associations and families, more subordinate in their dealings with adults, more connected with their own tradition, with religion - with their culture.
PILLMANN