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A few years ago, I wrote a short bio of Rolph Gobits for Stockland Martel’s website. I had never met Rolph and still haven’t; I think we did the interview by phone. In some ways, his responses to my questions only made him more enigmatic. Rolph shoots portraits and lifestyle and architecture (and he’s shooting a giant fashion story for the magazine Collezioni; I’ll post some behind-the-scenes photos later this week), but regardless of his subject, his images often seem inspired by a sense of isolation or, at least, solitude. “To me, people are like lighthouses in a very big ocean , with wind and rain and waves trying to break them and make them go under,” he told me when I interviewed him.
A couple of Rolph’s photos from stocklandmartel.com:
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Recently, a Russian art magazine published an interview with Rolph that covered a lot of ground—from the kind of gear he uses (he works exclusively with 9 x 12 cm Linhof cameras or M6 Leica cameras) to the photo agency he cofounded (Lensmodern) and even his personal life. Rolph’s wife, the Russian architect Yulia Globina, was kind enough to translate the piece for me. Here are some of the highlights:
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Can you remember somebody you photographed who affected deeply?
In the past 35 years, I have photographed so many people, and each person was unique in their own way. Each and every person I have photographed had something interesting or unusual to tell me that was different from my life.
What’s the biggest mistake that young photographers make?
Using digital cameras that do all the work for them, such as focusing and taking light readings. As a result, young photographers are less involved with creating an image because they think much less about why the take the picture and what is it they wish to say. Because it is cheap to make images—hundreds of images may be taken, and afterwards they look at what image worked.
Tell me about Lensmodern.
Four photographers (including myself) started an Internet-based photo gallery and picture library about four years ago which is owned and run by all the photographers (there are over 200) who do not like Getty or Corbis because they do not want to be part of a very large company. Each photographer gets 60 percent of each image sold, and 40 percent goes directly back into Lensmodern to pay for running costs. If at the end of the year there is a profit, this will be shared by all the photographers who are shareholders in Lensmodern. We only accept the best photographers in the world—although we have an associate membership for young photographers who are just starting out, but the work they do is of exceptionally high standards.
Can you tell me about your private life?
My wife, Yulia Globina, is Russian and is a well-known and respected architect in Vladivostok and was a part-time lecturer at the University of Vladivostok. We met six years ago in Paris, and I fell in love the moment I met her. Since then, I have been to Russia several times and am fascinated by its people and culture. We did get married nearly four years ago in Amsterdam, as I still have family in Holland and my mother was too old to travel to England. All our friends from England joined our friends from Holland for our wedding on a cold December day in 2005.
Yulia is the most important person in my life and helps me with my work whenever she is not busy with her own projects. Although we come from two different cultures (the east and the west), we are both people who want the same things in life; our love for each other is total and complete.
Over the six years I have known Yulia, she has been photographed by me hundreds of time, and she looks so different in each picture (Yulia has a 1,000 faces) and the camera just loves her looks. She is simply the sexiest and most sophisticated woman in the world. She has a son from her first marriage called Vitaly, and he works at the university as well as studying for a doctorate at the same time. I have a daughter from my first marriage who is a teacher in English literature and teaches in London.
How do you know a photo is successful?
It is not possible to say what makes the success of a photograph. It is a purely emotional reaction of each individual person that looks at an image. One person may love an image, while the next person hates it. That said, an image should always make the observer admire the way the photographer tried to express what he experienced. The observer should come away feeling, “I never thought about it in this way.”
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The mysterious Rolph Gobits
…
A few years ago, I wrote a short bio of Rolph Gobits for Stockland Martel’s website. I had never met Rolph and still haven’t; I think we did the interview by phone. In some ways, his responses to my questions only made him more enigmatic. Rolph shoots portraits and lifestyle and architecture (and he’s shooting a giant fashion story for the magazine Collezioni; I’ll post some behind-the-scenes photos later this week), but regardless of his subject, his images often seem inspired by a sense of isolation or, at least, solitude. “To me, people are like lighthouses in a very big ocean , with wind and rain and waves trying to break them and make them go under,” he told me when I interviewed him.
A couple of Rolph’s photos from stocklandmartel.com:
…
…
Recently, a Russian art magazine published an interview with Rolph that covered a lot of ground—from the kind of gear he uses (he works exclusively with 9 x 12 cm Linhof cameras or M6 Leica cameras) to the photo agency he cofounded (Lensmodern) and even his personal life. Rolph’s wife, the Russian architect Yulia Globina, was kind enough to translate the piece for me. Here are some of the highlights:
…
Can you remember somebody you photographed who affected deeply?
In the past 35 years, I have photographed so many people, and each person was unique in their own way. Each and every person I have photographed had something interesting or unusual to tell me that was different from my life.
What’s the biggest mistake that young photographers make?
Using digital cameras that do all the work for them, such as focusing and taking light readings. As a result, young photographers are less involved with creating an image because they think much less about why the take the picture and what is it they wish to say. Because it is cheap to make images—hundreds of images may be taken, and afterwards they look at what image worked.
Tell me about Lensmodern.
Four photographers (including myself) started an Internet-based photo gallery and picture library about four years ago which is owned and run by all the photographers (there are over 200) who do not like Getty or Corbis because they do not want to be part of a very large company. Each photographer gets 60 percent of each image sold, and 40 percent goes directly back into Lensmodern to pay for running costs. If at the end of the year there is a profit, this will be shared by all the photographers who are shareholders in Lensmodern. We only accept the best photographers in the world—although we have an associate membership for young photographers who are just starting out, but the work they do is of exceptionally high standards.
Can you tell me about your private life?
My wife, Yulia Globina, is Russian and is a well-known and respected architect in Vladivostok and was a part-time lecturer at the University of Vladivostok. We met six years ago in Paris, and I fell in love the moment I met her. Since then, I have been to Russia several times and am fascinated by its people and culture. We did get married nearly four years ago in Amsterdam, as I still have family in Holland and my mother was too old to travel to England. All our friends from England joined our friends from Holland for our wedding on a cold December day in 2005.
Yulia is the most important person in my life and helps me with my work whenever she is not busy with her own projects. Although we come from two different cultures (the east and the west), we are both people who want the same things in life; our love for each other is total and complete.
Over the six years I have known Yulia, she has been photographed by me hundreds of time, and she looks so different in each picture (Yulia has a 1,000 faces) and the camera just loves her looks. She is simply the sexiest and most sophisticated woman in the world. She has a son from her first marriage called Vitaly, and he works at the university as well as studying for a doctorate at the same time. I have a daughter from my first marriage who is a teacher in English literature and teaches in London.
How do you know a photo is successful?
It is not possible to say what makes the success of a photograph. It is a purely emotional reaction of each individual person that looks at an image. One person may love an image, while the next person hates it. That said, an image should always make the observer admire the way the photographer tried to express what he experienced. The observer should come away feeling, “I never thought about it in this way.”
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