It was unsurprising that I got my first digital camera as soon as they were affordable. I was fascinated with everything digital. I always got on well with computers, I learned to code very early, took computers apart, put them back together. When I was a teenager the internet happened and I became very rooted in the digital realm early on, long before most people even knew about it. LS: Although I shot a lot of film as a kid, I really started photography in the digital world. When did you start shooting film and what drives you to keep shooting? So, maybe I’m just a photographer who gets distracted a lot. However, the most consistent force in my life is photography and this is where I return when I feel lost in my other pursuits. I seem to be always searching, always moving on, always trying something new. I always found it very hard to restrict myself to doing one single thing or staying in one single place. I have lived in 3 different countries – Germany, England and now Spain – and no place really felt like home until I had already left again. Santa’s little helper – Leica M6, Zeiss ZM C-Biogon 35mm f/2.8, Cinestill 800T. Other interests just fade and never return. Certain things drift out of my life for a while and then return with force. I have been a tango dancer, a researcher, a roboticist, a designer, a writer, a photographer and probably a few other things over the years. LS: Did you know that this is an incredibly difficult question once you really start thinking about it? Ok, so who are you? (the short version, please) The slow progress makes further changes to the project likely, but I will definitely finish it by 2019, which will mark 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union. In some cases I even need to resort to a hybrid process to produce a decent silver gelatin print because the negatives are too scratched. In cold weather these cameras tend to seize up and tear the film which means that printing these negatives in the darkroom turned out to be rather a challenge. The Zorki 4K I used at the time was another Soviet touch, but frankly it was a bad choice because of the weather conditions I was facing. Right now I’m still in the process of printing the pictures in the darkroom on Slavich Unibrom 160 fibre cooltone paper which is produced in Russia and therefore a conceptual choice. More buildings that still appear in my pictures have disappeared by now and I could always go back to document these changes as well. And since the region is still going through changes I’m never quite sure whether the project is finished or not. It was a very difficult project, not only because of the emotional dimension, but also because I was trying to photograph something that just wasn’t there anymore. Sports ground, demolished Johannes-Kepler-Gymnasium, Chemnitz – Zorki 4K, Jupiter 12 35mm f/2.8, Kentmere 400. As a result of this policy the house where we lived during my primary school years, my kindergarten, my primary school and my secondary school were all demolished. In the end the city council decided that it was best to demolish the empty buildings, and called this effort “Fortschritt durch Rückbau”, which is one of those typically German euphemisms and loosely translates as Progress through Demolition. Both my father and brother had already moved elsewhere a few years before I left myself at the age of 17.Īfter this exodus, whole streets became abandoned and there weren’t enough children left to keep the schools open. My hometown in East Germany was really hit hard by the fall of the Soviet Union and about 25% of the population left over the course of 15 years after most of the factories closed down in the 1990s. LS: This picture is part of my Progress through Demolition project, which is a documentary project during which I went back to my hometown to document the disappearing traces of my childhood. Hi Lilly, what’re these these pictures, then? Closed supermarket, by now demolished, Chemnitz – Zorki 4K, Jupiter 12 35mm f/2.8, Kentmere 400. EMULSIVE interview #126: I am Lilly Schwartz and this is why I shoot film - EMULSIVE Close Search for:
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