Why? So you don’t come across like a dirty old man?
[Laughs] Yes coach bags! I have to find new ways because it’s different than maybe 20 years ago. People are afraid because of what they hear in newspapers and on television, and they’re not so willing to be photographed by a stranger.
Do you still operate in the same way, like a one-man band, where you do everything but the ironing?
Yes, when I do it for myself, it’s always like the old days, but when I am working for a client, I have the best people who help me. It’s funny because before I never had a stylist. I always had stylish people around me in the ’70s and ’80s, people whose opinion I trusted.
Do you do a lot of casting on the streets in Zürich?
Yeah, but I never do it by myself anymore.
I thought you were going to say that these days everyone has an agent.
It’s one or the other. A lot of people want to be supermodels — there isn’t the naïveté of, let’s say, the ’70s or ’80s.
What is your relationship with fashion like at the moment? Do you like shooting fashion or is it a necessary evil?
You know, I can’t do it too much, but it’s never a necessary evil. If everything is perfect like, let’s say, like the kitchen story I did for T, then it’s a pleasure. I never could do a project that I don’t believe in.
The Swiss photographer Walter Pfeiffer is known for his realistic, erotically charged images of free-spirited youth. After gaining international recognition in the late 1970s, Pfeiffer was largely relegated to the periphery for the better part of two decades — a recluse who spent most of his time taking photographs, shooting videos and painting watercolors for his own pleasure. But the publication of “Welcome Aboard, Photographs 1980-2000” and a well-received retrospective in his native Zurich exposed Pfeiffer to a new generation of photographers and magazine art directors who these days come a-courting. (Pfeiffer shot the “Flirt in a Skirt” fashion story in the current issue of T.) The Moment spoke via telephone with Pfeiffer, who curated the exclusive slide show, above, of previously unpublished images.
A.Like with a lot of your photographs, it’s kind of impossible to know when these images were shot. It doesn’t help that you very rarely date your photographs.
Well, I have started to date them now because my gallery insists. But when I did my first book, the images were all pretty much from 1970-80, so I didn’t have to put a date on every page. And I didn’t have too many exhibitions in those days, so it didn’t really matter. But now I have to sign it in on the back.
I hear you — it’s been miserable here, too. Let’s talk about the portfolio of your work that you curated for us.
You know, I wanted to do something special, not just reproduce images from one of my books — it’s always the books coach bags! — so the photos I chose have never been published. It gets boring for me coach bags, maybe not for the public, to just show the big hits.
I love the first pic in the slide show; I don’t think I’ve ever seen you photograph food. The pastries remind me of Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings of cakes.
A little bit, no? They were actually for a shoot in Paris with Eva Herzigova for French Vogue. I had her eating those because I always like it when people do something in my photos, and they are not just sitting there and staring at the wall. I hate that — it’s so boring. And people forget that they are being photographed when I give them something to do. In the beginning, I photographed people in a very classical way; then somebody told me that I was treating them like objects, which I didn’t like at all. Since then I always I try to get them to do something.
See more from the Women’s Spring Fashion issue
Q.You have an incredible photographic intimacy with the people in your photographs. Do you work with the same models over a period of time?
I really prefer to build a photographic relationship over time, but that’s getting more and more difficult these days because you only really get to photograph someone once or twice.
People refer to your disciples — Juergen Teller, Jack Pierson, Ryan McGinley, etc — but which photographers are you indebted to?
I have to tell you when I look at those photographers, sometimes I’m jealous of their work. But I’m coming from the art world, and mostly I’m inspired by painters and sculptors. But if I had to name photographers, I’m coming from von Gloeden, from Cecil Beaton, from Horst, from Hoyningen-Huene.
I thought it might have been because you didn’t want people to project meaning onto your photographs.
Maybe it’s also that. It’s the same reason why I don’t like to give the photos titles, because titles guide people’s minds too much.
Yes, I am going to the Alps, near St. Moritz, for the weekend. It’s been very gray and covered with fog here in Zurich and I really need some sun.
Hello, Walter. Thanks for doing this — I believe you’re off to the Alps in a little bit.
Walter Pfeiffer An image from Walter Pfeiffer’s “Flirt in a Skirt” fashion story in T.
If I am not mistaken, you’re also a child of Andy’s.
Yes, of course, he was my absolute hero. I mean, I could have gone on a trivia show and won because I collected everything I could on him. I still have all the first copies of Interview from the ’70s.
When I lived in New York for a year in 1980 — I won a grant and got a studio on West Broadway, a little further up than the Leo Castelli gallery — it was my first time there but I thought I knew everything about the city from Interview. I think you see Andy’s influence in the colors and pop sensibility of my work. So, O.K., I am a disciple of Andy Warhol.
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