Interview for JPEOPLE12

(Published on April 1, when the magazine came out.)

The highly professional photo series presented on her website are suggestive and impressive.
The 26-year-old communication design graduate based in Duesseldorf especially amazes her viewers with her “panographs”. Each photo series shows a well known place or building. First she takes a large amount of photos from one point of view and then she puzzles them back together creating colossal mosaic-like collages. It is a technique she coined and established all by herself. The finished works are fascinating sights with an urban flair which have led to a lot of media attention and even wangled an exhibition in Paris for her.
She herself does not want to limit her work to architectural photography though. On the contrary: It is her avowed goal to become a famous photographer like her role model Annie Leibovitz. As that suggests Mareen also shares Leibovitz’ interest people and fashion. And the way she stages both can definitely be a little more extra-vagant, the light a bit more pitiless, the main issue being that it has to be somewhat particular and non-reversible; just the way that we have come to know Mareen’s work by now. At present the young photographer and artist still acts mainly in Berlin and New York. But taking her creative openness into consideration it is more than likely that it won’t take long for things to pick up elsewhere, too. We keep our fingers crossed for her!

Where do you live & why did you decide to live there?
I have lived in Düsseldorf these past five years, moving here when already having started studying design. The city is the capital of the German state North Rhine-Westphalia, though we have less than half a million inhabitants. I do not need every establishment to exist twenty times in my city, two or three is enough and it feels a little more pre-selected than in an actual megacity. Still, Düsseldorf has a great infrastructure and is very central. You can get anything you need and are close to a lot of other cities of importance. What I am still missing is a larger group of the narrow demographic who I can get very comfortable with, but maybe I haven’t looked closely enough. Berlin and New York both can give me those people — but at the moment, I feel like one in a million there.

Where do you feel at home?
I see myself as a fast-adapting individual. Be it a place or a practice, I like understanding and getting into new things, making the best out of the new experience and working it in with my current self.

Describe your individual style/work.
Since I have a general design background, I claim to have an overview and am able to take over a large role in every project. I can go from idea to art direction to building up and taking the picture to finding the best fit to post-production and publication. Of course, I am glad to take help where I can and work with an assistant, make-up artists and stylists, models, actors or dances and maybe graphic designers. It is the whole package.

What methods, tools or techniques do you use?
Brain, eye & hands are my most important tools. The equipment I use to create photos in my studio or on location are strong strobes, a nice digital camera, comfortable photo editing software and my computers.

Why are you doing what you do right now?
I am trying to express what comes to me from inspiration & thought and make it into something that is visible to everybody. Inside me, I have a strong need to talk to other people and the visual form is the most pleasant for me.

How did you get started?
As a kid, I drew with pencils, got into painting as I grew and at around around 15, the camera had me: I was referred to as the girl who always brings her camera. I still painted a bit until around age 19 or 20, but then photography took over completely.

What were you doing when aged 15?
I was getting ready to leave my country and spend a year in the U.S., where I found unexpected appreciation and spur for my work at a very talent-oriented and modern high school.

What/who are your influences?
Oh, I wish I could name someone here — because it can be anything at any time. The strongest influence was that of the own pressure I put myself under, that of trying to be good at what I loved doing. This light and congenial pressure originated from being around people I loved and my education. It should be easy to understand for people with a similar mindset.

What/who inspires you at the moment?
I am inspired by the future, by nature and man’s elaborate accommodation in it. And the behavior of individuals — but then again seen in general, if this makes any sense… I try to focus on situations that make you look, that make you as a viewer stop and transfer them to your own life.

How do you come up with your ideas?
By looking around me and taking everything in. Listening to people talk, and living life. Sometimes I can transfer my own life or a series of eventsinto the picture. I also have friends located everywhere who I can call and talk about topics. That always helps when putting one and one together. I then sketch and look for material of existence to try to make something new.

What would you like to do that you are not doing at the moment?
I would like to travel around the world more and also see places that are said to be a little too dangerous.

What stops you from doing it?
I don’t want to go all by myself, but can’t plan far ahead right now because of an ever-changing project situation at the studio. Most people I would travel with are either in the same situation, need to plan further ahead or aren’t interested in the same places as myself.

What is beautiful?
Sunlight, which I am definitely deprived of, a nice caffè latte, the feeling of respect & trust.

What is ugly?
Small talk, empty phrases, greed and gossip. Oh, and some sea food dishes.

Describe your typical day.
I get up at around eight and have a nice latte that I take to my desk with me. Here, I go through email correspondence etc. My assistant Stefan or our intern comes in at nine and we start working on whatever project is in the pipeline, it might not be the same for everyone. If there is a photoshoot, we set up that and do it in the studio or where ever else. For lunch, we sit together and talk; there isn’t a certain time for a break, and we know when we need one. A couple of lattes later, the official workday ends whenever we feel like it can. It naturally gets more quiet towards the night. The pleasure of being your own boss and working project-based is that you can work when you got the power to do it and take time off when it is needed.

Describe a perfect moment.
Barbeque at the beach with friends as the sun is setting (I try to do that every so often) and sitting outside on the studio balcony that is located in the middle of a city but has the flair of a Southern-European vacation home, with a good read.

What was the best thing you ever did?
Listening to my intentions even though everything and everyone else says I am doing the wrong thing and then seeing it work out.

What do you like to spend money on?
Things that make life and work more comfortable. What would you never spend money on? Things that make nothing better and are merely status symbols.

You could live without?
No more reoccuring headaches, please.

You have to have?
Space and open areas, as in rooms and decoration, but also as in personal space and privacy.

What kind of people do you find interesting?
People are interesting to me when they have the ability to create something new out of what they take in from their environment, when they can make the fast connection back and then actually bring whatever they talk about to life — possibly in unconventional ways.

What are you wearing right now?
Sounds like a kinky phone sex question! But to easily defuse the situation: I am wearing a light beige cardigan over a bright red top that matches the chair I sit in almost too well. Skinny black pants, glasses. Imagine a day in the mind of someone else.

Who would you like to be?
Annie Leibovitz, for her vision and the power to make so many story-telling photographs come to life.

Any special events you are going to show up at during the next couple of months?
My vernissage in Paris. Galerie Bailly Contemporain is showing most of my Panography work from 2006 until today, including many new pieces. Most other plans of mine are made at short notice.

Five albums you love:
Bon Iver — For Emma, Forever ago
Francis & the Lights — A Modern Promise
Ólafur Arnalds — Eulogy For Evolution
Sophie Hunger — Monday’s Ghost
The XX — XX

Four books/zines you like:
Gregory Crewdson — Beneath the Roses
Franz Kafka — Das Werk
Ayn Rand — The Fountainhead
various design magazines, e.g. 125 Magazine

Three websites you have bookmarked:
My flexible to-do list at teuxdeux.com, the dict.cc dictionary and doodle.ch for easy scheduling.

Two movies that impressed you:
Das Leben der Anderen (The Life of Others), 2006 / The Game, 1997

Your favourite artist, designer or photographer:
I say Erwin Olaf, although I don’t like everything he does just because it is his work. ▲