The first time Markus Klinko was in Dallas, he was practicing his art with a harp and a symphony. Now he seeks it out with a camera and studio lighting — and he’s pursuing some of the most famous artists in the world.

Klinko has built an impressive portfolio of celebrity and fashion photoshoots of musical royalty such as Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and David Bowie in the time between his first trip to Dallas and the one he’ll take Friday, June 9, for his exhibition at Markowicz Fine Art (1700 Oak Lawn Ave.), which runs through June 22.

“This is a homecoming for me,” Klinko says. “Even though I only lived in Dallas for six months, it was a very important junction of my life.

The exhibition, titled Icons: Bowie to Beyoncé, will show some of his work with famous subjects, but that’s not all. The collection also shows the photographer’s ideas of personal expression and the stories he tells about people who have shaped the steady march of art, fashion, music and popular culture for the last three decades.

“Most of the work you see is by assignment, where record labels and magazines hire me to shoot these projects,” Klinko says. “However, in the last six or seven years, I’ve been more focused on my art career. I’ve been working with 50 galleries all over the world. It’s an exciting aspect of my career, so I have my own ability to create my own assignment.”

Markus Klinko started his American music career in the mid-1980s in Dallas as a classical harp soloist.  
Courtesy of Championship Management” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”> click to enlarge

Markus Klinko started his American music career in the mid-1980s in Dallas as a classical harp soloist.

Courtesy of Championship Management

Klinko, a native of Switzerland, started his artistic journey as a classical harp soloist at places such as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et De Danse in Paris and playing with orchestras such as the Paris Opera Bastille. He came to Dallas in the mid-1980s to continue his soloist career in the U.S., playing with the Dallas Chamber Ensemble. He remembers the walls of his apartment being particularly thin. He had to practice 10 hours a day, and the landlord kicked him out of his place.

“Dallas has become such a big city,” Klinko says. “When I was living there, it was more intimate. There was a nightclub called Sam Simeon and I would go a couple of times a week and people would come up to me because they knew I was the harpist.”

In less than a year, he signed a deal with EMI Classics and Columbia Artists Management that took him across the country and around the world. His recording of French harp music with the orchestra at the Paris Opera Bastille won him the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque award.

Then, a hand injury in 1993 derailed his music career at the young age of 33. Unable to play the harp, he sold his instruments and decided to pursue a career in photography “despite the fact I had never owned a camera,” according to a column he wrote in The Guardian.

He didn’t intend to shoot musicians for a living but his agent urged him to take offers, and his cover shoot for Vibe magazine in 2000 of Beyoncé while she was a member of Destiny’s Child supercharged his career and made him one of the most sought-after photographers in the music industry. Beyoncé would call on Klinko several times after that — most famously, to shoot the diamond-studded cover of her Dangerously in Love album.

“When I first shot Beyoncé in 2003, exactly 20 years ago, at that time when it first came out, I don’t know if people immediately looked at it and thought it was iconic but I said she looks cool and she became iconic over time as people kept seeing it everywhere,” Klinko says. “It’s probably my most famous image. I adore photographing her. There’s a give and take, not like discussing in words so much. It’s more like a dance. I understand what she’s going to be doing next. I think she understands what I’m seeing and doing.”

The list of celebrities Klinko has photographed is a lengthy one. Mariah Carey tapped him to shoot the cover for her album The Emancipation of Mimi and her Playboy magazine cover in 2007. His portraits and photographs of cultural icons include model Chrissy Teigen, comedian Chris Rock, singer Alicia Keys, actor Channing Tatum and Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood.

The late David Bowie asked Klinko to shoot the cover for his 2002 album Heathen, which sparked a partnership that produced some of Bowie’s most memorable and thoughtful images. Klinko’s series of portraits of Bowie are so moving and personal that when Bowie died in 2016, they stood as a tribute to the glam rock icon and his contributions to mankind.

“He scared me,” Klinko says. “It was like too much. I was into Deep Purple and Jethro Tull. David Bowie was too sophisticated for me, and then 40 years later, he calls me up on the phone says, ‘Hi, it’s David. I want you to shoot my album cover.’ It’s pretty phenomenal. I like it a lot.”

Klinko’s connection to fame doesn’t stop at the edges of the photo frame. Some well-known names, including some of the people he’s photographed, are some of his biggest fans and collectors of his work.

The cover for Markus Klinko’s new catalog of photographs features Beyoncé’s famous Dangerously in Love cover, which Klinko calls his “most famous” work.  
Markus Klinko/Courtesy of Champion Management” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”>

The cover for Markus Klinko’s new catalog of photographs features Beyoncé’s famous Dangerously in Love cover, which Klinko calls his “most famous” work.

Markus Klinko/Courtesy of Champion Management

“I’m very fortunate that people like The Weeknd, Beyoncé and Tom Cruise have started collecting my work,” Klinko says.

Thanks to his success, Klinko can also pursue his photographic vision on his terms with more artistic pursuits such as The Angel Factory, a photo series that satirizes the unrealistic beauty standards pushed on men and women using “high-tech medical brands” with a Black Mirror-esque view of the cult of celebrity and fashion. It’s an interesting way to cap a career spent documenting the looks and style of celebrity while making a statement with his impressive body of work.

“As a society, we pretty much created this religion and the religion is that our society of following celebrities and worshipping celebrities almost as if they were deities,” Klinko says. “I feel with my work, I’m always holding up a mirror to society reflecting it back to them and documenting it.” 

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Every day, I use the camera attached to my phone to capture memories and feelings – yet never quite achieve it. I’ve tried to store them in my phone, but they sit there unloved, taking up space in cloud storage and little in my mind. For real reminiscing, I turn to the albums I’ve collated since starting shooting on film. I feel the tangible weight of the book in my hand and flick through soft images of my friends and family, all taken on a second-hand point-and-shoot camera from 1998. Taken over the four years since I first discovered analogue photography, these photos are hazy and often out of focus, yet enable feelings and moods to flood back far more than an iPhone ever could.

As the imminent return of HMV to Oxford Street and the horrifying re-emergence of low-rise jeans can attest to, we’re firmly in an age of Nineties nostalgia. Film photography, whether taken on a cheap disposable camera, a fancy vintage model, or a new, pastel-coloured model from Urban Outfitters, is just another analogue artform seeing a resurgence among Gen Z. Phillip Grey works at Darkroom London, a community photography darkroom in north London. The studio also runs analogue photography courses, and he tells me that the vast majority of people who take part fall into the 20 to 35 age bracket. “[For] most of them, this is often their first encounter with a darkroom,” he tells me. “Even though they may have been shooting film now for a few years, they’ve certainly not had hands-on experience”. Those at the younger end might have been born in a post-film world, but are now eager to step into the past.

While high-quality digital photos can be captured in bursts via our phones, film photography is more precarious – there is a grit to the images, and an uncertainty baked into the process. Photos from a good roll can serve as a time capsule; incorrectly loading a camera can amount to an expensive pile of nothing.

Growing up, I never had much interest in photography (besides the pink digital camera I would take to concerts, later uploading all 180 photos from the night to Facebook albums called things such as: “McFly Bristol!!! Best day of my life!!!”.) Film photography was first dabbled with before I really knew what it was. In the big Boots in town, I would track down the last disposable camera for festivals and parties; the fuzzy, blurry pictures mimicking the hazy, Smirnoff Ice-fuelled memories. In 2019, I decided to give it a proper go, buying a cheap secondhand camera on eBay that broke halfway through the first roll. It was a learning curve (one I’m still on), but that was part of the fun! This was the first hobby I’d found as an adult – I wanted to invest my time.

Many factors are drawing young people to film photography, but primarily it’s to do with nostalgia. There is a film “aesthetic” that users of social media have always gravitated towards – filters were the norm in early Instagram, for instance, designed to emulate the grainy, golden-hour feel of 35mm film or vintage Polaroids. Today, the popular Huji app can lend digital photos the look of shots taken on a disposable camera, giving them a warm, saturated glow and even a 1998 timestamp in the corner.

Here, the appearance of film photos is the crucial factor, rather than the photographic act itself. Calum, a 26-year-old director who takes photos both casually and professionally, says that “everyone sort of knows the ‘film look’ – it can be hard to put your finger on at times, but something in the grain, the colour palettes, and the occasional light leaks or errors are far more emotionally engaging than an immaculate digital image.” Nothing sums this up more than the “iPhone versus Film” TikTok trend, where users take the same photos on their smartphones, then immediately again on film, highlighting the aesthetic difference in the images. The phone may have the technical quality, but film has the feeling.

There’s nothing wrong with using an analogue medium to post online – it is a truth universally acknowledged that everyone looks hotter on film, so why not? But taking old-school photos today can also allow us to push back against technology. Hugh, 25, works in theatre production and takes photos on film in his free time. He says that analogue photography makes the act feel like an art form again, where you’re focused on capturing the perfect picture rather than taking the same photo repeatedly. “It makes those images you capture feel a bit more precious,” he says.

The popularity of film photography offers a brief respite from our “hurried and harried” digital age, Phillip suggests. “I think a lot of people just want to jump off that bandwagon and do something that’s a little bit more reflective and slow,” he says.

It takes time to use up a roll of film – whether your roll can capture 24 or 36 pictures – while trying not to waste any shots. The wait can leave you feeling excitement, anticipation, and even a sense of dread. When I went through a break-up halfway through a roll of film, I forwarded the developed photo file to a friend, asking her to take out any photos of my ex taken before my heartbreak began around photo 16. Some things you don’t need to see.

From purchasing your first camera to getting those images back, analogue photography can be a complex, costly process, though. You have to figure out how to use the camera, shoot an entire roll before you can get any developed, and get prints made before you can put together an album to pass around like an embarrassing parent. There have been ways to do it fairly cheaply, from buying used camera models on eBay to finding an affordable independent development lab. What cannot be avoided now, however, is the skyrocketing cost of colour film itself. In recent years, even the cheapest film has tripled in price, making this fun hobby inaccessible to most.

When I started shooting on 35mm four years ago, the film itself was the cheapest element. Three rolls of Kodak’s beginner-friendly ColorPlus, each giving 36 photos, could be picked up for less than £3 each. Now, though, the same film has more than tripled in price on even the cheapest of outlets. Naturally, we’re in a cost of living crisis, and inflation is making everything more expensive. But it’s an issue specific to analogue photography, too. Film is expensive to produce, while certain resources needed in the process are growing difficult to source for cost and environmental reasons.

FujiFilm, one of the few colour film producers, virtually ceased production in the last decade, while industry leader Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Kodak, however, has been able to profit from our nostalgia, dominating the colour film market once again. Their prices have steadily risen since 2019, which photography magazine Silvergrain Classics blamed on “the surge in demand for film and the subsequently necessary investment in machinery and personnel to keep up with production”.

Since then, Kodak has seen increasing profits, with Grey suggesting that their lack of competition has played a large role in the rising costs. Black and white film, which his lab specialises in, has also slightly increased in cost, but nowhere near the extent of colour. Calum has seen it with his own eyes. He’s stopped using Kodak’s premium Portra colour film – “the classic Instagram film stock” – which will set you back £20 a roll, and largely now uses black and white film from companies such as Ilford instead.

For many amateur photographers, the price of film means the hobby is being put on hold – or at least slowing down. Hugh, once a keen photographer, says he now largely saves film photography for special occasions, not wanting to waste expensive stock on less important pictures. “I used to take film pictures much more regularly than I do now,” he says. “It’s upsetting… The reality is that costs just keep going up.” Calum agrees, adding: “Half the fun of film photography is the experimentation. If your experiments cost you £20 a roll, plus development and scanning, it becomes quite hard to justify on grounds of ‘fun’.”

It’s a trend we’re seeing across the board. When everyday items are tripling in price and people are struggling to heat their homes, photography, naturally, isn’t a priority. But in a world where we’re increasingly pressured to work long hours and eschew hobbies – or, alternatively, to monetise them – it’s not just the hobbies we lose. It’s allowing yourself the time to learn a skill for fun, and in the case of analogue photography, capture moments you will cherish. Learning to shoot on film is a process of trying, failing, and trying again; I’d hate to lose that.