{"id":107401,"date":"2020-05-06T15:30:50","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T15:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/designwire\/10-ethereal-interiors-from-photographer-frank-herfort\/"},"modified":"2022-11-30T14:32:12","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T19:32:12","slug":"10-ethereal-interiors-from-photographer-frank-herfort","status":"publish","type":"id_news","link":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/designwire\/10-ethereal-interiors-from-photographer-frank-herfort\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Ethereal Interiors from Photographer Frank Herfort"},"content":{"rendered":"

German photographer Frank Herfort<\/a><\/span> began his photography series, Russian Fairy Tales,<\/em> in 2005 as his final thesis to graduate from a photography and visual communication program at art school in Hamburg, Germany. His first image of Russia, however, dates back to 2000, before he decided to turn his shots of people, interiors, and landscapes from the post-Soviet era into a book. His return to Russia to produce commercial work for advertising companies and magazines exposed him to otherworldly architecture spread amply across the country. The sentiment of transformation throughout Russia is reflected in aesthetic cues he encountered in homes and public spaces. “From the beginning, I was fascinated by these public interiors and places with mostly people waiting in them,” Herfort told Interior Design<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He began capturing people positioned at in-between moments in public service spaces such as train stations, post offices, ticket counters, or metro stations, as well as locales which reflect a new world order after the collapse of the regime, such as cafes or museums. “I find it fascinating that most of the rooms are not immediately recognizable in their function and have an in-between atmosphere,” Herfort says. After traveling across the country for over a decade with his camera, he realized he had documented his own Russian fairy tales and continued working on his venture, while supporting himself as an interior photographer for various design and architecture magazines. <\/p>\n

Recently, Herfort launched a Kickstarter campaign<\/a><\/span> to fund the release of Russian Fairy Tales<\/em>, a book of 88 color photographs spanning his 15-year journey. He successfully reached his goal of publishing the book with Berlin-based publisher Kerber Verlag within a few days. His experience shooting scenes from an economically burgeoning Russia yields a specific lens demonstrated in figures and places in a humorous harmony, as often times witnessed in editorials or commercial shoots. “I use the public spaces as stages for real happening stories with real people acting in them,” explains the photographer about the distinction between the images in the series and those from his commercial work. Shooting with a tripod allows Herfort to slow down the photographing experience compared to quick shots with a handheld camera. “My public spaces are my studios, where everything should be real and authentic, nothing removed or added,” he notes. A sense of ambiguity runs through the images of ghostly museums, frozen lakes, and excessive restaurants, inhibited by people responsive to the photographer’s lens with determined postures and a somewhat ambiguous <\/span><\/span>range of emotion<\/span>. The architecture is equally present in each still—a witness of centuries-old upheaval and an emblem of rapid modernization.<\/p>\n

Read Interior Design<\/em>’s highlights of 10 interiors from Herfort’s Russian Fairy Tales.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dreaming<\/em>, 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n

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