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Interview
6 March 2016 2.00 h

Barcelona behind the lens

Katherin Wermke Every Friday afternoon on El Punt Avui Televisió, Barney chats with an English-speaking expat. For this month's interview he chats with the German photographer, Katherin Wermke.
You are from Ger­many. How long have you been in Barcelona?
I came in 2000, so for 16 years now.
You are from north­ern Ger­many, but then you moved.
I was born in a small vil­lage close to Ot­ter­berg and I moved to Cologne when I grad­u­ated from high school.
What do you miss most from your coun­try?
Small things, such as schwarzbrot, which is a type of black bread, and some other kinds of food. But nowa­days with glob­al­i­sa­tion you can get al­most any­thing any­where.
Why Cat­alo­nia?
Well, at 18 I started work­ing for a Ger­man TV chan­nel, then I went to uni­ver­sity and they gave me a schol­ar­ship at Pom­peu Fabra Uni­ver­sity. I stud­ied philol­ogy and audio vi­sual com­mu­ni­ca­tion there.
So pho­tog­ra­phy came later?
When I fin­ished my stud­ies I de­cided to stay here, but I needed some­thing more. So, I stud­ied at the In­sti­tut d'es­tudis fo­togràfics de Catalunya for five years.
Why pho­tog­ra­phy?
I've al­ways liked im­ages, and I re­mem­ber even be­fore com­ing to Barcelona, dur­ing a trip to Mex­ico, my fa­ther gave me a Nikon cam­era and I re­alised I like tak­ing pic­tures of new places and vis­it­ing new cul­tures. So, I sort of knew I wanted to be­come a pho­tog­ra­pher.
Do you travel a lot for your work?
I am al­ways be­tween four cor­ners of the world: Barcelona, New York, Dubai and Mum­bai. After I fin­ished my stud­ies, I didn't know what to do ex­actly, so I went to study in New York for three months at the School of Of­fi­cial Arts. From there, I got in con­tact with New York fash­ion week and since then, in 2006, I shoot there twice a year as a run­way pho­tog­ra­pher.
Then you de­cided to open your own com­pany.
I founded Barcelona Pho­tog­ra­phers (www.​bar​celo​naph​otgr​aphe​r.​com) on my own, but I have col­lab­o­ra­tors, as I love to work in a team. Then I've al­ways liked to teach, so I am teach­ing por­trait classes at the In­sti­tut Fo­togràfic de Catalunya, as well as a course at the ELISAVA school.
What pro­jects do you do?
We offer pho­to­graphic prod­ucts to vis­i­tors to Barcelona who want to get to know the city through the eyes of a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher. So we offer photo tours, photo shoots, and we show them pho­tog­ra­phy and also the city: where to get the best food, where to go shop­ping, which places to see. So, it's a mix­ture of a tourist guide and a pho­tog­ra­phy in­struc­tor. We do per­son­alised courses and courses for groups, for a max­i­mum of eight peo­ple.
With your fu­ture hus­band you've just opened a new stu­dio.
Yes, it's called Down­town Stu­dio Barcelona, in front of Santa Cate­rina mar­ket. It'a a large old ware­house; we've com­pletely re­stored it and now we're doing photo shoots, courses and video pro­duc­tion there.
You have a great at­trac­tion for India.
I've al­ways been at­tracted to Asian cul­tures: I love the colour­ful­ness of the land­scapes, of the peo­ple, clothes, food, the friend­li­ness of the peo­ple, and their open-mind­ed­ness. For me, India and Viet­nam are the most pho­to­genic coun­tries in the world.
You are in­volved in an NGO that works with and for chil­dren in India.
The idea of Don Bosco was born in Barcelona three years ago, when the other two founders asked me to get in­volved. Now we are or gan­is­ing char­ity events. I also did a re­port about the or­phan­age we work with in south­ern India. I also do art ther­apy coach­ing there with small groups of chil­dren: I give them Nikon cam­eras and ask them to por­tray them­selves and ex­press dif­fer­ent emo­tions. Later on, we print the pho­tos and that's a ther­apy that helps them to over­come cer­tain fears or trau­mas. I am also in­volved with the NGO, Shoot4Change.
Can you give us any tips on tak­ing good pho­tos?
The most im­por­tant thing is the con­nec­tion be­tween your mind, your heart and your eyes. There's no se­cret about it be­cause you can learn the tech­nique in four hours. The rest is going out and hit­ting the streets, and think­ing be­fore shoot­ing a photo.
What in­spires you?
That's a very tricky thing. I guess I feel in­spired by im­pacts. It re­ally de­pends on the day and the mood you're in. I get in­spired by faces, by peo­ple, places, but it has to be the right mo­ment, which you only find if you re­ally feel it. I find my­self tak­ing fewer pic­tures; in our dig­i­tal era peo­ple take too many pic­tures, but it's im­por­tant to take your time at first. My cam­era only al­lows me 12 ex­po­sures and that's enough for me.
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