Depth of Field: Hans Feurer Explains His Greatest Fashion Images
Photo: Hans Feurer
Hans Feurer is, as he puts it, “a bit of a dinosaur” in the fashion-photography world. “Since I was very small [in Switzerland], I’ve been a very, very careful observer,” he told The Cut. “I have memories from when I was young of seeing the light coming through curtains, things like that, but most of all, during the two years when I traveled in Africa, that was ‘66 to ‘67, I had been in extraordinary situations and saw magical moments and I certainly realized how certain light conditions can put a certain spell on a landscape, or an object, or a person.” Upon returning from his trip, he picked up a Canon, his preferred camera brand (even after to switching to digital several years ago), and started to shoot the naturally lit, unfiltered, and un-retouched images that he’s still celebrated for today.
He photographed the 1974 Pirelli Calendar, and developed relationships with designer Kenzo Takada and French Vogue, continuing to work regularly for the latter. And now Feurer finds himself embracing a Zen Buddhist philosophy about life, searching for “absolute simplicity, the essence of things, and that has sort of gotten me to … focus just on [one] thing that I think is important, and eliminate other things, and leave the background just like an atmosphere. I like that sort of crystallizing, and taking out, and leaving a smell almost of the place that’s been photographed … I am very conscious of trying to catch a particular moment that’s unique, you know?” Click ahead for some of Feurer’s most impressive images, described in his own words.
Kenzo campaign, 1983 “This is Iman on a volcanic island in the south of Sicily — Lampedusa. You have this great background and very strange light...
Kenzo campaign, 1983 “This is Iman on a volcanic island in the south of Sicily — Lampedusa. You have this great background and very strange light, and funnily enough, that’s how it is in certain places there. It looks like a studio picture. [But it was outside.] I adore Iman. I used to work a lot with her, and not only is she a fantastic lady and very beautiful, but highly intelligent with an amazing personality and charisma. [I wanted to] make a picture that stops you a bit, that’s not like all of the others. I didn’t have to give her any direction, really. Unless it would be ‘try sitting here,’ or ‘stand over here,’ or ‘let’s do a profile,’ but she turns out quite magical anyway, and she’s very conscious when she’s shooting. She turns into a sort of magical being.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
French
Elle, 1986 “This is a wonderful actress called Monica Bellucci, and I think she was 18 years old, and it was also down in the Seychelles....
French
Elle, 1986 “This is a wonderful actress called Monica Bellucci, and I think she was 18 years old, and it was also down in the Seychelles. I wasn’t thinking much. I was just being a photographer and making a picture out of it. But when you work for Elle magazine, you’re given certain scenes that they like to illustrate in their summer issues … They asked me to do something about skin and water, or something about breasts, or a tight ass, or what to do about hair on the leg, or sand in hair, and saltwater in hair, and all of these themes they had, and I was sort of thinking about ways to illustrate these things ... Do I think my work is erotic? Not at all. Sensual, yes, but not erotic, really … Sensuality has to do with feelings, with touch, with warmth, with something alive. And that’s what I’m interested in.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
Stern magazine, 1978 “Stern used to be quite important in the seventies in Germany, and they used to give certain photographers a lot of space, t...
Stern magazine, 1978 “Stern used to be quite important in the seventies in Germany, and they used to give certain photographers a lot of space, twelve to fourteen pages. And this was a picture I did for them using Kenzo clothes. It was shot in Lanzarote, the most northern of the Canary Islands, and the most extraordinary of all the islands because it’s completely volcanic — you think you are on Mars. These are lava fields that the lady is walking on, and it’s, in a way, the beginning and the end of everything. It makes a very special mood ... Most of the time I make little drawings for myself about the personality of the woman who lives in this way and dresses in this way and what she might do, and [her stance] was one of those things that I had drawn up. It reminds one a little bit of terrorists at the time, but it’s not really aggressive, it’s more defensive."
Photo: Hans Feurer
Kenzo campaign, 1983 “We did a lot of double-page pictures, doing different styles of Kenzo clothes, each one with another atmosphere. That was d...
Kenzo campaign, 1983 “We did a lot of double-page pictures, doing different styles of Kenzo clothes, each one with another atmosphere. That was done in Lanzarote as well, in natural wind and natural light. This is a wonderful Japanese model and actress — her name was Sayoko [Yamaguchi] ... Kenzo gave us completely a carte blanche, as they say — we could do what we wanted just to make interesting images. The idea was to integrate all sorts of different cultures into the mood of the picture ... Sometimes, things that are covered are more fascinating than when they’re all shown. It’s not that I’m trying to promote the Muslim belief or anything like this, and I’m very much against the way Muslims treat women, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking it’s very beautiful. When you don’t see the rest of the face because it concentrates more on the eyes, I don’t think any further than that. It’s mysterious.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
Kenzo campaign, 1983 “That’s Iman, as well, in the Seychelles. I thought, Why not [put her in the water]? The day before there had been a storm a...
Kenzo campaign, 1983 “That’s Iman, as well, in the Seychelles. I thought, Why not [put her in the water]? The day before there had been a storm and a full moon and a big tide, and the sea had made a passage between the beach and the lagoon. Normally, there was a beach and high sand dunes between the fresh water lagoon inland and the sea ... nature is constantly changing ... Kenzo [Takada] and I, we’re good friends. We’re very much on similar wavelengths. I love his fashion because he brought in the ethnic clothes from all different cultures of the world and he was doing what Benetton and their advertising campaign were projecting — everybody, all colors, are wonderful, and all cultures are wonderful — and he always projected a generosity and a love for other things. He projected the idea that one should be open to all other ideas apart from one’s own.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
French
Vogue, 2011 “They did a whole issue on ecology, and I thought ... maybe it would be funny to do a green tongue. It’s actually Sasha Piova...
French
Vogue, 2011 “They did a whole issue on ecology, and I thought ... maybe it would be funny to do a green tongue. It’s actually Sasha Piovarova, a very famous model. I went around Miami Beach, where we shot at the time, and went to bakeries that had sweets and stuff, and was trying to see whether or not that would be enough to make a green tongue. But they said that I should go to the factory where they made the wedding cakes and all of that, they have some food coloring, so we found it that way. Then, I went back to the hotel and tried it myself, and it worked very well on the tongue, but my lips, and my chin, and everything was green, and I couldn’t get it off. So I then spoke to the makeup artist, and he had an idea of using a certain cream on the skin at first, so it wouldn't stain the skin. It didn’t take more than two minutes to do that shot, and then we stopped and washed it out right away, and it was perfect. But I tried it out on myself first to be sure.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
Bogner Ski Clothing, 1980 “Willy Bogner is a friend of mine, but he’s also a very big ski clothes and sports clothes maker based in Germany. He a...
Bogner Ski Clothing, 1980 “Willy Bogner is a friend of mine, but he’s also a very big ski clothes and sports clothes maker based in Germany. He asked me to do a prestige picture for him – it was actually done in the Swiss mountains. It was extremely cold that day, and with a lot of wind. There was a big snow drift that was always taken up in the air by the wind behind us, so that’s how this happened. And it’s not studio — it’s for real ... I think one has to be opportunistic. For example, there’s a certain square in Paris where I like to work because I know whatever the weather is, or the time of the year, there are always interesting things happening between the background and the light on the square ... And these modern cameras today, of course, they allow you to work and concentrate very, very fast — you don’t need to spend hours setting up something. If you work in the way that I do, I’m almost like a paparazzi. I’m very, very fast … When I used to work with film, I sometimes had to wait because film has a certain limit. When there is not enough light, there is not enough light.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
Pirelli Calendar, 1974 “This was from the third calendar they did. That’s a picture that I shot in 1973 in the Seychelles Islands. The fashion ed...
Pirelli Calendar, 1974 “This was from the third calendar they did. That’s a picture that I shot in 1973 in the Seychelles Islands. The fashion editor of Nova magazine in London did the styling for that and she brought along all sorts of interesting clothes. The idea was that the Pirelli calendar should be sexy and at the same time very modern. I remember it was a very easygoing, very nice Belgian girl who was the model. I think her name was Kim ... This was a rather extraordinary period, up until the beginning of the eighties. Fashion photographers had a lot of creative freedom and were using it quite a bit, and to a degree, influenced fashion, like Helmut Newton and people like that. More and more during the eighties, fashion photographers had to become servants of the industry, and the industry decides not what is desirable ... and I’m not very happy about that. But, anyway, fashion photographers these are really in the service of the industry. So are fashion magazines, in the first place. That doesn’t mean that one can’t be more creative, but it is certainly more difficult.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
French
Elle, 1986 “This is Stephanie Seymour, again when she was very young, in the Seychelles. She is not only a very, very nice person but she...
French
Elle, 1986 “This is Stephanie Seymour, again when she was very young, in the Seychelles. She is not only a very, very nice person but she is also a very well-known American model, and also had an absolutely wonderful body, so it made it very easy to do pictures like this. There was a certain time with these waves coming in, very round without breaking, and I saw that and said, ‘Just try walking there, to that wave when it comes.’ And I got this idea that I could do that sort of a shot ... I think one could say that maybe today, for example when I work with French Vogue, I have the privilege of working with very interesting ladies who are always extremely professional, and totally into the job, but on the whole don’t show very much color apart from what has to do with the job one is doing ... It didn’t used to be like that. One had a chance to have a more personal relationship and a little bit more time with things ... And that’s not so much the case today, I guess, because many of these girls are trained like circus animals, to be let loose and to perform.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
Pirelli Calendar, 1974 “I don’t remember who that girl was, but it’s kind of violent the way she shoots out of the water. She comes out like a wi...
Pirelli Calendar, 1974 “I don’t remember who that girl was, but it’s kind of violent the way she shoots out of the water. She comes out like a wild amazon. I guess if you looked in a magazine, you’d probably remember it. It grabs you somehow ... I like very independent women, and women who are not scared of things. I like women who are going where they want to go and not so much objects, which is a rare kind of women. I guess you can say I’m a feminist in this way. I’m not active politically or anything, and I don’t propagate it, but I think that women are very much underestimated. I think they are much more interesting than men, and stronger as well, or quite a bit anyway. I think, in the past, it’s been mainly men who have fucked up our planet. I think that if women had a bit more say, we might be better off.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
French
Elle, 1989 “The next one was about summer care, on your hair, and your body, and your skin. We [wanted to] show how a girl is shampooing ...
French
Elle, 1989 “The next one was about summer care, on your hair, and your body, and your skin. We [wanted to] show how a girl is shampooing her hair – everybody can interpret that in their own way – but this is the way I interpreted it, and I thought it was a nice way of showing that ... I’m very much heterosexual. I’m not interested in men, really, and I have to admit that I became a fashion photographer, of course I was a lot younger then then, but it was actually during those years when I traveled in Africa that I decided that the best thing would be to be a fashion photographer, because of all of those interesting ladies one could meet.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
French
Elle, 1992 “That’s about beachwear. It’s an abstract way of showing a short, and it’s a nice way of showing a short. This wonderful color...
French
Elle, 1992 “That’s about beachwear. It’s an abstract way of showing a short, and it’s a nice way of showing a short. This wonderful colored lady was with us, and I saw that we had these shorts and I said ‘I’d love to do that on that wonderful brown skin.’ This was actually in Harbor Island in the Bahamas ... Another thing about what motivates me to do pictures is that I always liked mass communications, and I’ve never done a picture to be treated as art or to be hung on a wall. I’ve always done my pictures to be seen by millions of people, if possible, in the magazine. That was actually my purpose. Some pictures are nice enough that you can pick them out separately, but that was originally never the intention.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
French
Vogue, 2012 “This is a very recent picture that’s actually from this year, from French Vogue. This [was] done for the beauty and health ...
French
Vogue, 2012 “This is a very recent picture that’s actually from this year, from French Vogue. This [was] done for the beauty and health department, and they said that they wanted to do something about nourishment, about what is good for the body, and the relationship to ecology and nature. She’s drinking something healthy there, it must be carrot juice or orange juice. And it’s not blue makeup – she’s actually wearing a blue visor to protect herself from the sun ... But I thought it would be more interesting not to show the visor ... I’m very lucky that Emmanuelle Alt likes what I’m doing. I think she thought that [my pictures would be] a counterweight to all the sort of what I call ‘synthetic pictures,’ the over-retouched pictures where all the girls look like Barbie dolls and have plastic skin, which my pictures don’t have, and maybe that’s what she likes about it.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
French
Vogue, 2011 “This is a very famous American black model from Louisiana – I can’t remember her name. This picture is quite nice from the l...
French
Vogue, 2011 “This is a very famous American black model from Louisiana – I can’t remember her name. This picture is quite nice from the light point of view because it’s extremely early in the morning, in a Paris square, and when the first light came on, there we were. That’s why I like it, because it has a nice mood about it ... At the beginning when I started as a photographer, when I thought about what fashion was, I discovered that there’s always, I call it for myself, a ‘dream’ behind a certain kind of fashion. It allows a woman to transform and become somebody else, and if she plays the role long enough she will become it. I try to understand what the dreams are behind a woman when I see her, the whole collection of the group of clothes I’m asked to photograph, I try to think in which way one could sort of bring out that particular direction that her dream seems to indicate, and to make it a little bit stronger. I try set it up almost like a movie, make it come alive, and photograph it with total conviction.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
French
Vogue, 2011 “I had to do some pages with Ralph Lauren jewelry. I thought it would be interesting to do it on a Chinese lady. In this case...
French
Vogue, 2011 “I had to do some pages with Ralph Lauren jewelry. I thought it would be interesting to do it on a Chinese lady. In this case, I didn’t say much [to her]. All she had to be was interesting and beautiful and very quiet ... Honestly, offhand, I can’t think of any [shoots that stand out to me]. I’m a bit of a dinosaur, of course, I’ve been doing this for such a long time, on and off always, that I find it always fascinating to dive into the fashion world. And even when I was the most active in my time in London and Paris, I’ve only worked ever half of the time – I used to do it in periods of two weeks, then I would take some time off, at least as much again, fishing somewhere in Africa, or on some other adventure. Then I would dive back into this world of fantasy projections again. And in a way my character, my personality, needs that to make contact with the earth regularly. It’s a totally different way of being, to be a fashion photographer, so I go in and out. I dive like into a pool.”
Photo: Hans Feurer
1
/
15