“I Want to Go beyond What Is in Front of Me:” In Conversation with Photographer Roland Halbe

Roland Halbe came into photography entirely by accident, discovering it at the age of 15 in a class on optics. His physics teacher presented camera obscura effects, which immediately triggered his fascination. He then started borrowing his father’s old camera quite regularly. While still in high school, Roland worked part-time at a camera shop, eagerly discovering everything there is to know about photography. Those were the circumstances that kindled Halbe’s lifelong romance, first with black and white, and, eventually, color photography with a focus on the built environment.

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Halbe was born in Karlsruhe but grew up in a very small village nearby, also in the metropolitan area of Stuttgart in southwestern Germany. No one in the family had an artistic or architectural background. His father worked at IBM and his mother was at home raising Roland and two of his siblings. The only person who was interested in photography in the family was his grandfather, but only as a hobby. Initially, Halbe entered the University of Tübingen near Stuttgart. But regular trips to Sardinia with an Italian girlfriend led to applying to IED, Istituto Europeo di Design, a local art school in Sardinia’s capital, Cagliari. It was the just-opened branch of a private school in Milan. After 3.5 years of predominantly technical studies, he graduated in 1987. Being the only foreigner at the school, presented an opportunity to master Italian, while subsequent frequent travels also contributed to learning English and French.

In the following interview, Roland Halbe discussed his very first commission which came from the father of his childhood friend, a way of working and intentions behind his work, some of the most memorable collaborations and commissions, his busy schedule, and faraway travels that let him experience life in ways that are quite unexpected and stimulating.    

Vladimir Belogolovsky: At what point did you discover architecture as your subject matter? 

Roland Halbe: Not immediately. While I studied photography, I worked as an assistant to a fashion photographer Werner Pawlok in Stuttgart. I even organized one of his photoshoots at archeological sites in Sardinia. Going through that experience I realized that I would want to do something else. And I never liked working inside a studio like staging sets for advertising photography. I enjoyed working outdoors and was fond of photographing landscapes and city life, which eventually brought me to architecture. 

I was also lucky to have my friend from childhood; we were neighbors since I was six. His father was a passionate photographer. He happened to be the CEO of the biggest glass manufacturer in Germany, which is now a part of Pilkington. He owned a whole collection of Leica cameras and all kinds of photography equipment. During my adolescence, this school friend’s family invited me to go with them on their summer vacation to Southern France. The father had two sons and both hated his photography hobby, as he was stopping in every village to take pictures of buildings. They were also bored of his slide shows that he liked to do after the family would come back from the trips. And there was I who loved all of that! [Laughs.] 

He liked lending me one of his cameras, so we would explore the sceneries of a nice little village in Provence together. Later, when he heard that I was studying photography he told me that when I am ready, he would give me my first commission. So, after graduation, I was commissioned by an advertising agency to do the annual report for FLACHGLAS, which was the name of the company. I had to photograph all buildings where their glass was installed. It became a huge job that took six weeks of traveling all around Europe. That’s what finally brought me directly to photographing architecture. Once I had my initial portfolio, I used it to go after other commissions.   

VB: What are you trying to achieve in your work?

RH: If I were to describe my style, I would say it is a blend of accuracy and emotion. I am not too precise but neither I am random. I want to go beyond what is in front of me. I hope the feeling you get when you look at my photographs is that they take you away. In other words, you see the image but you also see something else. You don’t see merely an object. I want to feel emotions. I want to discover those moments that let me get carried away. 

VB: On your website, you have a long list of your photos featured on the covers of some of the most prestigious architectural magazines. Did you work with those magazines directly? 

RH: I wanted to explore great architecture and in 1989, I started reaching out to some architectural magazines. It was the golden age of magazines when they could afford to commission photographers directly and independently from architects whose projects they featured. I first started to work with db deutsche bauzeitung magazine based in Stuttgart. The editor-in-chief was also very passionate about photography and he gave me a lot of work. Soon I started contacting the architects who were published in those magazines.   

VB: What is your schedule like?

RH: I typically photograph between 80 and 90 projects every year, at least 50 are outside of Germany. But these projects are often combined. I just came back from Tenerife where I photographed two projects—a house and a passenger terminal for cruise ships—and next week I am going to Southern France where I will be photographing two projects—housing blocks—one in Toulouse and the other one in Montpellier. Then I will be going to Stockholm to photograph a small concert hall and after that, a couple of projects by Morphosis in Europe—a highspeed train station in Galicia and a very large headquarters building for Eni, the Italian energy giant, which is probably the biggest project Thom Mayne with Morphosis ever realized. And when I go to Chile, I spend there about two weeks and I typically photograph 10 projects on a single trip.

VB: What was your most special commission like?

RH: One of the most memorable commissions was my trip to Chile for the first time to photograph the ESO Guesthouse of the world’s largest optical telescope, called the European Extremely Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal in Northern Chile. It is in the central part of the Atacama Desert in the Andes at a height of 2,500 meters. This location was chosen for its optimal weather and atmospheric conditions—it never rains there and the skies are clear overhead for at least 350 nights a year. There are hardly any clouds there ever. In other words, every day is exactly the same—the sun goes up, and then it goes down. Otherwise, nothing changes. It is an extremely isolated and quiet place. I spent five days there, which was quite an experience because anywhere you go every day is different, but not there. It was unique in that sense. And the project, ESO Guesthouse designed by Auer Weber, a practice based here in Stuttgart, was quite interesting, it was featured in the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace with Daniel Craig.

This was 20 years ago. On the same trip, I went to Santiago to meet with Alejandro Aravena. That was arranged by the editor of Casabella, Francesco Dal Co. Alejandro introduced me to some of the leading local architects and I photographed some historical projects there for the magazine. That trip has led to many subsequent trips and collaborations in Chile. Since then, I typically go there twice every year.  

VB: I am fascinated by a photo you took of a wall mockup for SGAE Headquarters in Santiago de Compostela, Spain designed by Ensamble Studio. It was assembled at a stone quarry. How was that experience?

RH: Shooting the mockup of the SGAE Headquarters wall was fun, as it is always a lot of fun shooting projects for Antón [García-Abril] and Débora [Mesa]. Anton is quite crazy, in a positive way, and there were always adventures involved when shooting for him. Nothing is impossible for him, and I know very few people who look at the world with such enthusiasm as he does. We drove to the quarry by car from Madrid. The most remarkable thing about the mockup is that it was done at all. He convinced his client to do a full-scale mockup of such enormous dimensions. We took Anton’s son with us and he served as the perfect scale model for me to make the structure look even bigger than it was.