New work by Paul Ripke: 2013

There is a new book by Paul Ripke with the meaningful title “2013”, but he seems to have misunderstood the PR part: a review of the year should be published in December at the latest and not in September of the following year. Well, let’s assume for his benefit that at the end of last year he simply something else had to do…

All joking aside: word has probably gotten around by now that I'm a big fan of Paul Ripke and his pictures. That's why I was of course very pleased when I was invited to his book presentation yesterday in his great studio just outside Hamburg. In an absolutely entertaining hour and a half he told the story (partly with support from Marten L. from R.) wonderful stories about all of his pictures in the book - and there are quite a few.

Paul himself says of 2013 that it was his craziest and most eventful year to date - until 2014 came, but that's another story.

All pictures in the book “2013” ​​were taken with his Leica and the 24mm lens. “Less gear, more brain” is rarely more apt than with this piece of work. Yesterday I tried to capture the incredible amount of pictures with a quick Image on Instagram to clarify. They almost exclusively show people, sometimes even naked. The images in the book are arranged chronologically, but there are no indications of where or when the images were taken. Therefore it is worth taking Paul on his little one Tour of Germany to visit: today in Berlin, September 14.9th. in Munich, on September 15.9th. in Heidelberg and on September 16.9th. in Cologne. If you can't be there, you'll miss something, but you'll certainly be able to post entertaining little films online to accompany the pictures. He has for 2012 also done and there was a lot of filming going on at yesterday's book presentation.

Seriously, it is a complete mystery to me how one could write such a tome Illustrated book for 40€ produced. In a store it would never go for less than 120€. At least it contains first-class pictures of concerts by Materia and Die Toten Hosen. And also behind the scenes pictures of Jan Delay videos. I have included a few impressions of the book in the gallery above.

It's unbelievable that Paul literally squanders this book for such a low price. In any case, I didn't hesitate for a second before handing him the money.

Thank you Paul for always taking me on your travels through your pictures. And thank you also for the lovely evening afterwards in the Schanze, where I was able to talk to Marteria about the significance of the film “ET” in the reunification of Germany…