Sunday, December 10, 2017

Blue Blue Mood


Some years ago, the artist Ulrich Gleiter, of Saint Petersburg by way of Strasbourg and Munich asked me to take his passport photo. He was emphatic that he could not smile as the impudent act would render his pic unacceptable by his Russian watchers, I mean hosts. “Der vill be no smilink” or words to that effect. 

I think “Uli”, a diminutive he no longer welcomes since he's forty, looks a gulag bound deer in the headlights.

Gleiter was born in Germany in 1977. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, the Suricov Art Academy in Moscow and the Repin Academy in Saint Petersburg from 2004-2010. The man speaks four languages fluently which means that, according to sworn testimony, he doesn't have to translate as he moves seamlessly between German, Russian, French and English. Oh, his physicist father helped discover the nanoparticle. There's some kind of gene pool thing going on.

This outtake was made with two Profoto flashes and matching 48 inch Chimera softboxes. The shutter sync lagged a tad which accounts for the pesky black stripe at the bottom.

2 comments:

Blacks Crossing said...

I love this head shot and the accompanying explanation. Of course, smilink in American passport photos is no longer allowed either...Don't know what he thinks about it now, but it is very straightforward and cherubic in its own way. A nice photograph all around.

Steve Immel said...

Thanks, Daryl. Cherubic nails it, at 33 or so for heaven's sake. Looks about twelve.