1 PHOTO(GRAPHER): JOSEF SCHULZ

BY HUGO OLIVEIRA

HO: Where was the photograph taken?

JS: It's an abandoned petrol station in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

HO: When was the photo taken?

JS: It was taken at the end of April 2011. I don't have an exact time stamp.

HO: What were the conditions at the site?

JS: It was a sunny day, this station is placed between two regional roads, in the middle of a commercial area, accompanied by sound and smell of heavy trucks.

HO: Are there technical aspects about the photograph that you want to point out?

JS: It was made on a 4x5 negative material.

HO: How did you get into the site.

JS: This was the first photo of my latest series "poststructure", which has the focus on commercial sites in the USA. It's my own artistic project, costs are covered by myself.

HO: Had you been in that site before?

JS: No, I had not been there before. I made a rough plan, which states and towns I would like to visit, but no site was discovered before. It was somehow a road trip by chance with a conceptual idea behind it.

HO: Why did you select this image and what do you find most interesting about it?

JS: It was the first image of approximately 500, which I made in the following seven weeks.

HO: Is there an interesting event about this photograph that you would like to share?

JS: It was an important moment, I did this first image, and I was immediately convinced, that my visual idea would be possible and it gave me a lot of energy to go on with this project.

HO: Is there anything that you were trying to communicate through it?

JS: With the words of Gregor Jansen: "The photographs by Josef Schulz are also influenced by loss and resignation. Here something has failed whose origin remains hidden and whose context the images deliberately omit. America as the“land of unlimited possibilities”is the past, and unlimited impossibilities are now as present as the over-indebtedness of the Americans. Each beginning contains an ending and every failure contains an oddly shaped ruin." is everything said.

Josef Schulz is a Düsseldorf based photographer.

The image and interview selected are part of the editorial project "1 Photo(grapher)".