Major Branching Point in My Life
Gerhard Kress
Before it was suggested to leave the school to prevent being thrown out, I had brief exposure to a photography workshop. That turned into a contributing factor. My father’s dilettante interest in the mechanical workings of cameras he could never afford nor fully understand, was another. Seeing the work of photographers and their expressive, often disturbing photos taken in Vietnam when the USA attempted to destroy culture and country and before that, photos taken in the Spanish Civil War, was another reason. The fourth reason: teenage angst and an intense feeling of being overburdened and lost, made me decide. I was now looking for an apprenticeship in Industrial and Scientific Photography. In Germany that means three or three years and six months of hands-on learning, including one day a week academic education, covering chemistry and physics.
My first attempt lasted less than the three months of the probationary period. I was being abused. My boss had no intention to train me. He needed me to sell photographic products. I wasn’t even told, nor encouraged, to attend the legally compulsory school. Until I complained politely, but persistently. All the staff, including the manager, were on my side and were elated when I squared up to the intimidating boss. I got my way and began school without further delay.
And there I met Claude. His own apprenticeship was coming to an end. His boss was the Master of the Guild who had a proper and well set up studio. No portraits and no bloody wedding photography. And no shop attached, selling films, cameras and paraphernalia. Claude was sitting his exams and was about to return home to Togo in Africa to set up his own studio. He encouraged me to contact Mr Kilian.
Mr Kilian tried to put me off on the phone. “The future in professional photography is precarious” and he wasn’t certain that he really wanted to train another apprentice. Again, I was polite but persistent to at least get to meet Mr Kilian in person. He reluctantly agreed but asked me to bring photographs of my work. Oh dear. I didn’t, at that point, have more than a Box Brownie and had not managed to make much use of that even. And I had not seen much of the darkroom at work or learned how to develop a film or print photographs.
In my lunch break, the excellent lab operator, a girl about my own age, took pity. In a crash course she taught me how to develop a black and white film and make quality prints. Now I rushed to the zoo and snapped away at elephants. I subsequently spent several lunch times, unbeknownst to my boss, in the dark room, developing and printing.
Kilian, whom I later learned, was related to the film maker Stanley Kubrick and was himself making films, especially for the geographical society, in Africa, and I, met up in his impressively endowed studio. He painted me a bleak picture of the future of professional photography. After our conversation I was politely dismissed, but he asked me to leave my photographs with him for perusal in the evening. Two days later he rang to inform me that I was accepted to be his next apprentice. Something in the framing and composition of my photographs suggested to him that I had an eye for the craft and art of photography. It was just in time before the end of my probationary period with my current place of work. Any later and I would’ve been legally obliged to serve the entire three or more years in my current place without any hope of ever passing those demanding exams at the end. I felt elated, of course. I also felt apprehensive and very relieved. And this was nearly the end of that episode.
Except, I had done my time as a shop assistant so well that my current boss asked me to stay until the last day of my three months and for that he offered me the choice of an excellent professional quality camera. His business manager helped me choose it and urged me to also ask for an additional two lenses. Furthermore, I was asked, urged, almost, to come in on Saturdays and work in the shop for real money. But my convoluted and complicated adolescent social and love life had other plans for me.
My apprenticeship with Ingo Kilian was varied and fascinating, though it did not lead me to become a press photographer in Vietnam or any other hotspot of violent conflict. But it did lead to living and working in Iran as a photographer. Not working for a Western multi-national company and living in a Western ghetto, but an Iranian company and living with an Iranian family.
And that is yet another important branching point in my life which I have already written about in my semi-autobiography ‘Another Nail’ which is available in RCT Libraries.