Matthias Herrmann: I think there's no single reason for my work being the way it is. Of course, there is an exhibitionist side to my nature - otherwise I simply couldn't do what I do. Self-observation does play an important role in my work, which is about devising fictitious personalities. I don't actually try to portray what might be real people, but rather role models and clichés that interest me.

Maren Lübbke: In other words, a play of different identities that are, however, always given an ironic treatment.

Matthias Herrmann: Irony, identity and abstraction are concepts that figure very prominently in my work. As far as identity is concerned, the fact that I live in a very backward country with respect to gender roles plays an important role: I think it is important amongst other things that in all of these works I am recognisable as a person in spite of all the dressing up and make believe and in a way also tangible and vulnerable. A lot of people who see my work, without knowing me personally, think that I must be some sort of sex monster and they're generally very surprised that I'm quite harmless really.

Maren Lübbke: The role models you exploit are very cliché'd. They can stand in almost paradigmatically for the gay and transsexual scene, which is permeated by extremely fixed images. It would interest me, especially as you yourself are gay and undoubtedly move in this scene, how far you are trying to ameliorate these rigid images. Because, what strikes me as a woman and a feminist is your ironic treatment of images of femininity similar to those prevalent in the gay and transsexual scene and which seem to me to be very standardised.

Matthias Herrmann: Of course, it's interesting to see how homosexuality is presented by the homosexuals themselves and also how it is seen by heterosexuals. It's true, gays do tend to present themselves as particular types. The so-called Gay Liberation created it's own quite distinct archetypes and even today gays tend to regiment themselves very strongly through the kind of things they accept - either as single individuals or the Gay Movement as a whole.

So, on the one hand, I'm interested in the damn heterosexuals, on the other, I think that gays make many of the same mistakes. Of course, it's important to construct a gay identity, but the whole thing becomes so unbending so quickly. I also see myself as a gay activist, but I'm not interested in doing it just within the confines of the scene. Recently (also because of AIDS), there has been a much larger public for the gay lifestyle and gay issues. That doesn't mean that the existing power structures have changed significantly, or that prevailing prejudices against the gay community have become a thing of the past, but being gay has become a topic for public discussion - with all the concomitant advantages and disadvantages.

Maren Lübbke: Advertising, which is gaining so much ground in the public mind nowadays, is also often referred to in discussions of your work. There have been so many changes in this area in the last few years; for instance, certain types of masculinity have gained more and more publicity. I'm thinking especially of the Calvin Klein advertising campaign, which you also refer to in your work.

Matthias Herrmann: Of course, Calvin Klein's publicity is very important historically. It shows an almost naked man splashed across 40 m2 in Times Square. He made his own version of the gay ideal available to a larger public and this concrete image was very important, particularly in the mainstream.

Maren Lübbke: And you let advertising aesthetics influence your pictorial imagination?

Matthias Herrmann: I often made a one-to-one copy - for instance, of Marky Mark, the white rapper who stood model for Calvin Klein for a long time before he began a career as the actor Mark Wallberg. The viewer's gaze is irresistibly directed towards the genitals (which are covered by underpants) in the photographs, for instance because of a very low positioning of the camera or just Marky Mark's notorious "crotch grabbing". I copied these photos, except that in my case my cock is clearly visible hanging out of the trousers.

Maren Lübbke: What makes you copy them? Is it a fascination of "the image or ideal of masculinity in advertising publicity" or are you trying to draw attention to specific issues with the help of these duplications? One problem area, for instance, would be that classic female disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are on the increase among men following the recent inflation of images of masculinity in the media. Men are being constantly confronted with physical ideals that they feel they have to emulate.

Matthias Herrmann: I think so, too, that poor straight men are finding themselves in a difficult position. Gays have always been more interested in and often more successful in attending to their appearance than straight men. After the Calvin Klein ad, for instance, some straight men probably thought that it was about time they did something about their beer bellies. And that's when the whole thing about eating problems among men really started, which is a relatively recent problem. You have to be fit, handsome and healthy - otherwise you have no hope of success.

Maren Lübbke: A number of different enterprises already have installed their own fitness centres, where their employees can devote themselves to physical exercise.

Matthias Herrmann: Of course, I am one of that kind myself - I run to the fitness centre every day so as to be able to hold my own. Whether I can compete or not is not really the point, what really is of interest is are the demands one makes of oneself. Anyway, I have a very good excuse for training: I am my own model and should, on those grounds, look reasonably okay - otherwise, I wouldn't be able to make the pictures I do.

Maren Lübbke: So you teeter in your photographs between self-adulation and critical detachment?

Matthias Herrmann: Yes, the contrast is quite pronounced. But it is important, because I also want to show up the discrepancies - and that includes the discrepancies in my own person.

Maren Lübbke: On the one hand you're the photographer - the man behind the camera - and, at the same time, the object being photographed or the man in front of the camera. Are there any conflicts between these two poles or do the creator and his object always work hand in hand? This interests me particularly because of the voyeurism involved, which surfaces again and again in discussions of photography as an artist medium.

Matthias Herrmann: My hope is to achieve a higher level of abstraction by comporting myself in front of the camera. It's about the visualisation of an idea and the ability of the viewer (and the creator) to grasp abstraction. Naturally, details are important, but after a short while you know what my cock looks like. If I were to work with different models again and again, I'd get into trouble - not just because I probably couldn't stop myself from becoming voyeuristic, but because the viewer's perceptions would be quite different. Its also about appropriation processes. I take ideas from pictures and use them in a new situation.

Maren Lübbke: Although the fashion photography you cite could be said in the meantime to belong to mainstream art, I'd like to talk about pictorial quotations that are quite clearly culled from art history. I'm thinking of Mapplethorpe's "Man in a Polyester Suit", for instance, that you copied. In Mapplethorpe's work, however, the head of the model is "cut off" by the upper edge of the picture, whereas you included your own head in the photograph.

Matthias Herrmann: I included my head in this work, amongst other things, because there's an interesting story about Mapplethorpe's photograph: the head of the model is not shown not because Mapplethorpe didn't want to, but because the model didn't. Only portraits without genitals or body shots with genitals exist of this live-in lover of Mapplethorpe's.

Maren Lübbke: But the funny thing is that the model has fragmented his own person and completely robbed it of any personality - a fact that has often been pointed out in connect with Mapplethorpe.

Matthias Herrmann: But the real - and mundane - reason was probably: "I just don't want to see my face pictured there as well".

Maren Lübbke: The story might be banal, yet the photograph has entered into the annals of art history and so made the itself open to all sorts of interpretations.

Matthias Herrmann: One reason why I copied the photo was that this story - which, after all, gave rise to a brilliant pictorial idea - amused me. That's why I grin in the photo - as if I were thinking of this story.

Maren Lübbke: This example shows clearly that you constantly introduce new elements into existing pictorial inventions. Nevertheless, I'll have to burrow further: it has occurred to me that orientation towards certain existing models is evidently immensely important to a lot of young artists in particular, both male and female. Peter Weiermair has pointed out that the pictorial vocabularies of contemporary photographers is defined by quotations. But why is that so? What role do pictorial quotations play in your work? Is it to help the artist define his aesthetic position and to encourage the process of reception? Why does Mapplethorpe's aesthetic surface in your pictures?

Matthias Herrmann: Does it? I don't think it does at all.

Maren Lübbke: Okay, you don't really uphold the classical ideal of physical beauty, as Mapplethorpe did. But you cite him and you work with strong, very potent bodies as a matter of principle. And apart from the fact that you always counteract your images with wit and irony, you display your body in very classical poses.

Matthias Herrmann: In Mapplethorpe's case this form of idolatry is very strong. On the one hand, he admires his black models and elevates them on a pedestal and, on the other, there's an almost colonial element in his pictures: the gaze of the strong and potent white man - namely the one who has the camera - directed towards the Black subject. It is a very similar gaze that generations of photographs used towards the female body. Well, that's not true in my case. Not least, because I am my own model - a situation that I have been trying to break up in HOTEL 1. But to finish Mapplethorpe off: every asshole I photograph is beautiful - that's true. I may touch on taboo areas, but it is always "beautifully presented". I pay homage to an ideal of physical beauty and, at the same time, I try to undermine it, but through the act of homage, which is as it were from within, and not for instance by making beautiful photographs of fat people, as Ms. Kölbl does in her fat girls book.

Maren Lübbke: I now know why I first thought of Mapplethorpe. My first impression of your work was: "Here's somebody who is playing with specific prototypes and clichés, and who presents us with a masquerade, in a rather clever way. I then showed your work to a number of my friends, who do not work as artists and who are not pronouncedly feminist in outlook and really have nothing to do with art. All of them admired your beautiful body, which of course had also struck me, but which didn't interest me any further, at least not in an artistic or art historical context. And it is so often the case that people who are only superficially involved in art are able to take a much more unbiased view and remark on things that we - who are permanently immersed in art - do not register consciously. Anyway, after we had admired the aesthetics of your body, I asked myself about possible cross-references and arrived at Mapplethorpe.

Matthias Herrmann: Well, if you're more interested in feminist theories and strategies than the body that strives to conform with the current gay ideal of the body, you'll pay more attention to that than someone who can't avail of such an intellectual arsenal. It depends very much on the standpoint of the viewer and his or her personal biography.

Maren Lübbke: Then, I'd like to return to the beginning. What is interesting in your work to me as a feminist is the play with different identities. There is a debate among feminists where the difference between sex and gender has been called into question and where the idea of a inherent core of each gender is shown to be a fictitious construction or produced discursively. Judith Butler has, amongst other things, pointed out that sexuality is an intelligible process that is constantly being reconstructed by interpretation and representation and fantasy and that the production of gender identity can only take place within these parameters. Butler herself was often accused in this context that her theories negate the possibility of a politically responsible individual. I don't see it that way myself.

Matthias Herrmann: How do you explain the accusations?

Maren Lübbke: Let me put it in a very simple way: Butler would for instance begin by negating the categories of "man" or "woman". In "Gender Trouble" she argues that we should stop always talking about "us" - "us" meaning women or the Feminist Movement. On the contrary, we should stop assuming that there can be such a thing as fixed identities, not least because the biological factors influencing these are constantly shifting. Instead, we should concentrate on the porosity of identities. Of course, this prompted an outcry within the Feminist Movement, in the sense: Now, just when "we" can hope that women's demand for equality will at last be heard after years of hard political lobbying, "we" are supposed to give up any sense of solidarity and instead let ourselves in for the subversive play of the realisation of identities... or something like that...

Matthias Herrmann: This idea is also being discussed within the gay movement- the demand for gay solidarity. Which I find right on the one hand. On the other hand, there is absolutely no reason why someone should be a nicer, better person just because they are gay. All of this unthinking blather about "us" just gets on my nerves.

Maren Lübbke: Quite apart from the question of "us", I find your demand that gender should at last be seen as being culturally determined important in connection with Butler. Butler's theory is always discussed on such a highly abstract plane. I myself don't see her theories as being all that abstract, maybe also because my own work is no longer so extremely theoretical. I find her "Gender Trouble" suggestion interesting: to play with or assume different identities, a masquerade. At first, of course, it sounds a little absurd and the question is whether such activity can result in the development of long-term politically responsible individuals.

Matthias Herrmann: But is there any room for desire in this scenario? Is the sexual desire of the individual also a social construction?

Maren Lübbke: Hmm.

Matthias Herrmann: She doesn't believe in genetically programmed hetero and homosexuality at all?

Maren Lübbke: That would be my position, too. Butler argues more that the whole spectrum of possible behaviour or individual expression should be included.
The play with different identities is very prominent in your work - although your own person doesn't entirely disappear in this masquerade. Your work also encompasses female sexuality, as well as heterosexual or heterosexist images.

Matthias Herrmann: Yes, of course, I find that important, too. As a homosexual, I do have something to say about female sexuality and heterosexuality. After all, you don't have to be an opera singer to have something to say about opera.

Maren Lübbke: I want to return to the question of how you yourself enter the picture. On the one hand, you spoke about the fact that there are a number of source images that exercise a certain fascination on you and that these offer moments of identification. On the other hand, your works reveal a very circumspect treatment of the various existing pictorial prototypes. Maybe the topic has already cleared itself up for you in conversation, but please say something more about your role as the photographer.

Matthias Herrmann: I think, well, this problem of the artist and his subject doesn't really arise for me, because I'm both at one and the same time. Both are in my head. When I'm shooting a photograph, I don't separate one from the other according to the motto: As the object I do this and as the artist I do that. I do both as myself. So, the problem is not the actual shooting itself, it arises afterwards - when one is confronted with the photographic product. Of course, I would like to merge these two categories, the artist who takes the photographs and the passive object of the photograph. The problem is to eradicate this antithesis, the polarisation and the assessment this would infer.

Maren Lübbke: Do you see yourself as being confronted as a photographer with the problem that photography is still surrounded by the nimbus of being an "objective" medium that reflects reality?

Matthias Herrmann: By now we know, not least because of the whole development of computer-generated photography, that this is a very sensitive area. Yet, we still think when we look at a photograph: that's what actually happened. In my photos that really is the case: in other words, I don't manipulate the slides or the negatives after developing them; my colours don't evolve during enlargement in the lab, but through the use of gels and coloured light during shooting.

Apart from that, my work always deals with situations that have been specially arranged for shooting - as opposed to Nan Goldin or Wolfgang Tillmanns, for instance, where one of the most important features of their work seems to be that they are "authentic"; i.e. that their photographs display actual existing groups quite authentically. In Nan Goldin's case it's the New York art scene during the late 'seventies and the beginning of the 'eighties and later also the drag scene: it's often pointed out that she really did belong to these groups. And the same applies to Tillmann - he really is a raver or was he present at this church convention in his own interest, etc. I find that emphasising this fact or this claim to verisimilitude raises problems in the assessment of their work.

Everything I do is "staged", is a mis en scène. Mine really is staged photography - I don't even find the women's clothes particularly arousing. It's all just staged: authenticity is not important to me at all - quite the opposite in fact, the more you depart from it, the better.

Maren Lübbke: Goldin and Tillmann provide me with a cue for something else. There is a series of yours that is supposed to deal with the topic of death and transience. It consists of exaggeratedly enlarged, erect penises.

Matthias Herrmann: AIDS is such an important part of life - not just sexuality, but also our daily relationships with people who are sick or have died. That was always important to me. And when I started to work as an artist, I was presented with the problem of expressing the threat posed to the body by the AIDS virus in artistic terms. There are far too many of these very beautiful and very erotic photo books featuring men. With the onslaught of AIDS, the desire to show healthy and handsome men seems to have only got much stronger. And I asked myself how can the threat and the danger be taken into account. I wanted to extricate male photography from this very romantic, erotic setting (which is almost reminiscent of BILITIS) and to be more brutal in the presentation of the male body.

Maren Lübbke: But why the erect penis? Through its exaggerated scale in the photograph, it gains almost in phallic vigour. As if it were a symbol of total masculine power and omnipotence.

Matthias Herrmann: That's true, that's certainly in the photos as well. But I think there are different ways of approaching them. For a start, the penis is not a phallus. The difference between the biological penis and the symbolic phallus should be clear enough. As a symbol, the phallus is the subject of very conflicting points of view. In primitive cultures it was often seen as an extremely positive symbol, but in the West it has been very much on the defensive lately - especially because of the attacks of feminists. Today, it "stands" for male domination and female subservience. I think the phallus is one of the most potent symbols, because it elicits such a range of responses. And I also find that the cock is visually very arresting. All the same, it is subject to taboos: you're not allowed to show it in public. Historically speaking, there are very few depictions of erect penises, at least in Western art.

Maren Lübbke: Yeah? Well, I have the feeling that I'm running into them all of the time.

Matthias Herrmann: Look at advertising, for instance. Frontal male nudity is a comparatively new phenomenon.

Maren Lübbke: How did your friends and acquaintances react to these pictures? Was there a lot of discussion?

Matthias Herrmann: Of course, there are always discussions. My family, for instance, has a certain amount of difficulty in dealing with the content of my work. People were particularly upset by the assholes I photographed. I don't show the cocks so often now, but they were always good for discussions - which I find an important element in art. It's good when people talk about something: it doesn't just stay in the exhibition hall. That's one of the main objectives of the whole of the safer-sex-education that I did and which I always saw as a sort of supplementary information to my artistic work. The most important thing about an HIV Information Campaign is communication. It's not only about telling people to use condoms but about communication and exchange. And the cock pieces were very good for that. Of course, they're simplifications and a lot of people reduce all of my work to just that.

Maren Lübbke: Well, I see a whole lot of people in my mind's eye that would start screaming about your cock pictures.

Matthias Herrmann: What would they scream about?

Maren Lübbke: About the demonstration of power I was just speaking about.

Matthias Herrmann: But is the demonstration of power really there? I don't think that these pictures are one-to-one demonstrations of power; amongst other things because the cocks in the photographs have been presented in such an extreme way - almost helpless and cut off. You can also see them as something that is threatened and in need of protection.

Maren Lübbke: Perhaps in connection with your pictures of other sexual organs - vaginas and anuses.

Matthias Herrmann: I have never shown these works together, I wanted to avoid confronting them with one another. I think that the presentation of the cocks irritated a lot of people, because the way they called for people's attention. But I see that as a positive quality and that's what's important.

Maren Lübbke: What role do the postcards that you make and send off in more or less regular intervals have for you, or the publications that you make: particularly compared to the usual form of exhibitions.

Matthias Herrmann: I have a great fondness for the act of printing: I like standing in a printing works and working with the people there. It is of course a more than adequate form of presentation for photography and I often prefer it to a signed and framed original. As most of my printed works are not tied to any ulterior use (i.e. an exhibition) and because I largely pay for them myself, I also have great freedom and none of the annoyance that usually goes with working for galleries.

Maren Lübbke: Why don't you finish by saying something about the baby photos?

Matthias Herrmann: At heart, I'm a collector. I collect ideas for photos. As far as the babies are concerned, it happened like this: the first series was made in 1988 with my nephew. Initially, I merely wanted to make some "nice photos" of him. Baby photos are usually so stupid.

Maren Lübbke: But you gave the babies special props; for instance, an apple.

Matthias Herrmann: The apple is, of course, a classic motif in art history. But I used the props for the simple reason that babies are also more relaxed during photo sessions with them. The other objects - the cucumber, the plastic breast, the Agfa ball - are props that also appear in other works; I tried to draw parallels to my other work.

Maren Lübbke: You're opening yourself up to criticism that way - from the point of view of sexualising baby photos.

Matthias Herrmann: Yes and no. Because that can only be done if one knows my other work and not through the baby photos on their own. Sexualisation, as we understand it, doesn't happen in the photo itself, but through the context. Hence, the photos as such are "safe". Of course, I'm also interested in the sexual components of the photos (especially because of the present hysteria about everything that has to do with babies). Babies and small children have a strong sexuality - their own sexuality, mind you - that is quite independent of my or our sexuality. I wanted to reflect this in my work - without damaging the children in any way, neither the children in the photographs, nor others. I wanted of course to avoid that a defendant might say during a trial for child abuse: "Yes, but I saw Matthias Herrmann's pictures and that edged me on". However, it is part of my work and it should be apparent as such. And that is also the point of the seemingly innocuous props. The boy with the cowboy hat chose his own costume himself, but of course I arranged everything: the white underpants (Calvin Klein once more) and how he sprawls across the centrefold, a pose that is reminiscent of the centre spreads of "Playboy" ladies. But in our case, it was a harmless form of collaboration; the boy loves to pretend being a cowboy and I didn't have to interfere very much.

Maren Lübbke, 1997

Published in 4 Publications 1997