| Interview with Thierry Kleiner |
by Ori Jauch
An Interview with Thierry Kleiner. 1) Do you have a project you currently working on? My current projects working title is 'desperate land' and is concerned with the actual global economic and financial cirisis. My intention is to reflect the aftermath of the avidity of our society. Driven by my intuition and working mostly in the streets, i want to create a visual atmosphere of feelings and emotions evoked by this selfish behavior, of which probably everybody has a seed in himself. The goal is to lead the completator to confront himself with the actual world we live in, to make him think about it, to ask questions. 2) What is SlideNite? SideNite is a monthly photographic event, a projection which takes place in the center of contemporary cultural production PROGR (www.progr.ch) in Bern, Switzerland. The main goal is to promote contemporary photography i like. It always shows a swiss and a foreign photographers work. The focus is on author photography. The basic idea is, to show photography where the people are, to bring photography out of galleries and museums straight to the heart and confront the interested public but also visitors who are there by chance with photography. 3) Could you say something about your work Crying night? Crying night is a very personal work of my free and freaky years between 2003 and 2006. It shows a lot of friends and people i hung out, it was a sort of personal 'exhibitionism' and one of my first works, that goes beyond documentary photography, as i'm deeply convinced, that photography deserves better, than just document life ! 4) What could you say if a young photographer asks you for advice? Not in making career but in improving his photography. Produce, produce produce and confront your work to professionals of the medium. Get critics and always follow your personal way! 5) You have a huge cycle of friends and photographers that surrounds you trough your projects slidenite and your former collective Tangophotos. How this influences your work and what inspires you mostly? As it was me who initiated Tangophoto (together with Olivier Thébaud) and SlideNite, it didn't influence my work as much as one could think, but it shows more the way i think and want to work. A photographer is mostly working on his own, so to be in an independant group, forced us to work together, to share visions and ideas which brought all our photography further. I always followed my way and vision of photography, but of course, the critics of my friends pushed me in my work and i always try to let this critics get me further on in my projects and work. 6) What is the idea behind AntePortas? First the idea of Ante Portas was to produce a collectif project of Tangophoto. I wanted, that the members of our collectif show every month during 1 year, 1 picture of our very intimate life, to get us to know each other better and to produce a personal body of work. This was back in 2001. Then one day in 2007 i think, during a long phone call with Olivier Thébaud, he brought the idea, to make a Ante Portas 'bis' with photographers we like. Ante portas means 'in front of your door', so the basic line, is to show very personal shots and through this, produce again, a very personal diary of those invited photographers. Ante Portas had not a specific goal, if it's to show photography which goes beyond a documentary way of pictures. 7) What can we expect from you in future? As since 2008 i'm member of the comité of The Photoforum Pasquart in Biel (CH) (www.photoforumpaquart.ch), my goal is to promote contemporary photography in this institution. This summer i managed to produce the first big solo exhibition of Lorenzo Castore ('no peace without war') in Switzerland. For the next years, i want to bring at least 1 exhibition per year of a photographer (or two) into the institution. For my personal work, first i want to finish my latest project 'desperate land' and for the next year i plan to publish a book about SlideNite. If i reach all this, i'll be very happy.   Interview Date: 31.12.2010 Interview with Thierry Kleiner by Ori Jauch Images by Thierry Kleiner |