EGCan you explain a little about your project Down There and how you came to start it?

AZThe gentrification of certain areas in a town are a reality which are touching me in a certain way, showing me how fast our generation and society is living and how rapidly we lose our memories.

I lived in the center of Barcelona where the same happened.

At this time I have not documented this change and it haunted me, until I came to Hamburg and I recognized the same is happening with the old and famous district of the Reeperbahn.

So I got a second chance to document the change and the complex overlapping of generations and different times.

With this project I wanted to see what was left from an era. The image of the Reeperbahn, the famous red light district of Hamburg, is known all over the world and had its “golden times” in the 60ies 70ies and 80ies. The times are changing but still some of this generation is alive, after a life of excesses, human drives, fake glories… What is left over?

EGHow did your relationship develop with the people you photographed? How did they feel about you photographing them?

AZThe process of getting in touch with the people and photographing them needs time and dedication. As it is an area very much photographed and sold to the outside there is a need to distinguish oneself as a person who has a certain interest and is first of all human and at the search for a certain exchange. Entering is the most difficult part, but speaking openly and spending some time with the people of the business and in the bars, answering their questions and slowly getting to know more and more of them opens a way to make pictures. Most of these people are very lonely so they open up quite fast if they really see an interest in the other.

After some visits and a slowly making the first photos with the big format camera everybody got interested in me and my way to work and photograph. Most of them were happy to receive photos where they can immortalize the past, as the present is always worse. But I had to learn that it is always a new beginning in gaining trust with each person even if everyone knows each other. Apparently everyone does his own business not interfering openly in the other decisions.

EGIn your artist statement you talk about the area turning into a ‘living museum’: how have you avoided perpetuating this with your images?

AZI was trying to show / to interpret the places as they are. The district and the characters are surrounded by a special atmosphere, but the longer as you are inside there, the longer you look at it, you feel and see more and more the violence, decadency, loneliness, weirdness of a life in excess. The same is with my pictures, by glancing at them, all can be seen as a big scene and only interesting, but looking longer another layer is appearing, which is the one of the cruel reality of a passed and used era.

I have chosen the large format camera to give the protagonist a lot of time to show themselves as they are or want to be seen, and to give the viewer a high quality which you can look at for a long time and discover multiple layers.

EGCould you tell us the story behind your image ‘Ivonne, 09’?

AZThe photograph of Ivonne is made at the “Safari Club” before the evening shows are starting. It is the last sex cabaret in Germany, and has four rounds of different shows, from different artists. Mostly it is striptease and dancing to a kind of musical and with theater props. In one show they have live-sex on the stage.

Before 9 o’ clock in the evening, the artists have to prepare themselves. Every evening it is the same. The shows are changing rarely.

Ivonne works at the Safari Club since 8 years, and she knows that she has to make now the money when her body is still nice. Her dream is to build her own house, and she stopped drinking two years ago. She is speaking positively from her business, and she is saying the ones who want to make money with it, they can do it. You have to work hard, satisfy your clients and be careful not to drink, because by abusing drugs you will loose more money then you actually are able to gain. She doesn‘t believe much in humans, she has a boyfriend and loves dogs, which are the only creatures in which she can trust.

The photograph was made immediately after a discussion with her boss about changing her show. She wanted to have a new show because she is getting bored if she has to dance the same show longer then a year or two. Her Boss was not very happy about it, because they have very different taste in music, so they had a discussion meanwhile she had to finish preparing herself for the evening.