It’s early evening when I meet German photographer Carolin Leszczinski at her Friedrichshain apartment in Berlin, as we hang out on her balcony taking in the last remnants of what has been a gloriously warm spring day in the city. As we puff away on our Gauloise cigarettes, Carolin recounts how she traded in the pomp and hype of fashion photography (in 2005 she was short listed at the ‘Festival de la Mode et de la Photographie’ prize in France) for the rough adrenalin-pumping highs of the Canadian Rodeo circuit. At one point the peroxide blonde comes off all reflective and glassy eyed as the smoke swirls around her face in the evening breeze, then suddenly laughs off her wistful musings and says ‘I’m this old sentimental fuck (laughs) I am really!’

Tell me a bit about your background and how you gravitated to becoming a photographer?

I first came to Berlin from Cologne in 1995. I wanted to work in a more creative field and came to Berlin to do an internship for the Akademie für Kunstler, supporting the artists and helping out with exhibitions, which lead me to seriously considering a career in the field of art, especially in photography.

At the time there wasn’t really anywhere in Berlin where I could specialise in photography, so I started to apply for schools that had individual photography courses, outside of Germany, like the Rietveld in Amsterdam and a couple of schools in the UK. One day I got a call from the Rietveld and they said I could start immediately. So in 1997 I went to Amsterdam to study there for 3 years.

What was your work like at the time?

It was loads of stuff really. I did lots of black and white of course, ‘cause I had a dark room at home and could develop my pictures in my own time. I mean everybody starts like that right? When I came back to Berlin in 2000 after my studies in Amsterdam, I continued working with experimental video and photography on the side.

Do you think your time working with experimental video has had an effect on your photography and photographic style? I.e. moving image against stills?

Yeah there is probably an influence, as I was working with super 8 a lot when I was exploring experimental video. When I look back I noticed that when I worked with film, I always wanted to influence just one still image from the reel. I was into the film and video side for about half a year and then thought, why try to impose this control onto a moving image and go through that whole process of deriving a still from a reel of moving images, when I could just concentrate on one photographic still image instead? So that’s how I came to only focus on photography.

You also spent sometime in New York. Can you tell me more about that time?

I was at the School of Visual Art and I didn’t like it that much. It didn’t really have much to do with the school exactly, but more to do with the students who attended, which was a bit weird ‘cause, luckily, I didn’t have to pay anything to study there as it was part of an exchange programme, but normally it would have been very expensive to study in the States anyway, but it was especially expensive in New York. As a result, it limited the amount and type of students. Basically I was surrounded by a bunch of rich kids whose families could afford to send them to school and that was kind of interactively limited.

Though I have to say there were a couple of things that were really great. First, the school gave me the opportunity to live and work in New York for half a year, and second, ‘cause it was such an expensive school, they had great equipment. It was an opportunity to photograph in all formats and I took lots of technical classes there as well. I thought I might as well take advantage and concentrate on working on my technique while I still had access to such amazing facilities, as I would have less chance back in Amsterdam as the school didn’t have as much money to invest in such equipment, so students really had to do things by and for themselves if they wanted to advance technically.

I also did jobs on the side when I was in New York. There was a photography, design, and graphic and illustration magazine financed by the school so I always had opportunities to get paid work from them.a

Was this the time when you started getting into fashion photography?

One of my teachers at the time was Guy Aroch, who was a big fashion photographer at the time in New York and he seemed to really like my work and suggested that I should go to all these modelling agencies and just shoot the model’s casting cards. So he would tell all these agencies I was coming and I would shoot the new models. They paid really good money and it was also a bonus to photograph all these young girls that had just arrived in New York, as you could also use them for free for your own work, as they needed pictures to build up their own portfolios anyway.

That led me to doing smaller, playful editorial shoots from time to time for various style publications – performance based images where the models had to interact and play with objects.

Do you think that time when you were working in the fashion industry and shooting for magazines has had an effect on your work today?

Nah, not really, I mean that was just for a short while and it was just very playful and not serious. I never did that much stuff in the studio. I mean I tried lots of studio work, but I was more of a location photographer, rather, I always had the need to look for really interesting locations. The magazine work was really just a job, something I did on the side to support myself in New York. But the main time, I was always doing my own projects.

I remember photographing on Avenue D; I had seen this Puerto Rican bodybuilding studio called ‘The Gladiator’. It was this really nice old-fashioned place with old machines and there were only Puerto Rican guys working out there, who were really funny and very professional. It was always funny as there were all these little pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the wall. So I did a project where I photographed them there and things like that.

The guys there were super sweet and funny, I think the owner of the gym was perhaps a kind of cocaine dealer as there were never really that many people there, so I don’t know how it managed to keep going. They were all excited to be photographed and were really approachable and friendly about the whole thing. I would sometimes pass by then on my way to the hairdresser’s and they would be standing outside, say hi and we’d have a bit of small talk. I will always remember that they were lovely and nice to me.

I also did a project on the Miss Teen New York beauty pageant, upstate in Albany. Awful city!

It was very interesting as I was working in fashion but also photographing this event, and it really made your realise the different definitions of what is beautiful to some people.

At the time it was very difficult to candidly photograph the participants, as it was around the time of the Joan Benet murder, so security and authorisation to photograph at these pageants was very tight and controlled. They didn’t really want any outsiders to get in and add to that; that the crowd who are involved in these pageants are a bit weird anyway. I needed tons of letters stating who I was, that I was authorised to photograph there, but they still never let me backstage or to photograph anything spontaneous and candid just the boring catwalk stage performances, which sucked cause I wasn’t interested in those posed pictures at all.

While I was there I was always followed by the security wherever I went, which was irritating, as I couldn’t actually do what I wanted to do and was super disappointed.

It seems that a thread that runs through most of your work is a sense of faded times or places that have this run down melancholia of former glory. What attracts you to that?

Maybe! I’m this old sentimental fuck (laughs) I am really! I guess that’s why I photograph. It has something to do with preserving a special moment and time. I want to keep that and it will never come back again. That is definitely an underlying factor. When I was a kid I was super moody and didn’t want to grow old. Who knows? It could unconsciously have had an influence or something to do with that.

My friend was in New York last summer and he remembers the series I did at that Puerto Rican gym and said that he passed by and it has sadly closed down now, which I was sad to hear.

Every year you travel to Canada for the summer and document the Rodeo circuit in British Columbia, tell me about this series your have been working on recently?

My current work is actually a long-term project I have been working on for quite a while and which I have only recently started to put together. I go there nearly every year for the last seven years. Being an avid horse rider myself, I would always attend the rodeos. What fascinates me is this really old fashioned kind of lifestyle. I never planned to do a project about it, but somehow got really into it.

I also attend non-professional rodeos too, which in a way is more fun, as it’s a bit more rough and dangerous, where there are all sorts of accidents ‘cause they are not such professional people (giggles).

It’s a thrill and as an outsider it is a weird lifestyle and everything that comes with it and goes on around it, reminds me of an old time that has already gone by. Perhaps the time it evokes never really existed, but still when you are young and growing up there it is a weekend thing to do. It’s all linked to farming and if you were a young crazy guy and you like riding you would naturally go to rodeos.

What also captivates me is that there aren’t that many professional rodeo riders and it is something people do purely out of passion, as it’s very dangerous and normally you can’t really get rich competing. Basically you don’t earn money and you drive every weekend from one rodeo competition to another to collect points. Don’t forget that it’s also really long distances between small towns in Canada, so there aren’t as many rodeos as in the States. They have to drive around during the competition season in the summer and if some of the guys are really good they get a chance to participate in the American season, if not they only do one season in Canada and that’s it.

But in all honesty that professional level doesn’t interest me, I’m more interested in smaller events, which are more familiar. Everybody kind of knows each other and it’s more like a travelling circus. I can’t speak about the US cause I have no idea but in Canada it’s not that “redneck” image that many Europeans may assume. I mean the people are special for sure, and it’s rough and I like that roughness.

That’s interesting, because when you look at your images they communicate that environment as being very beautiful and ethereal, not so rough. You integrate very delicate and faded lighting and colours of late summer afternoons.

It is a lot about colours when I’m shooting out there for sure. It’s all so energetic and flashy, but I don’t always focus on the action and am more interested in behind the scenes and all the things happening around the main rodeo action. I tend to talk to a lot of people and take portraits shots.

Yeah, I noticed that you have this natural sympathy for the people you picture in the rodeo series.

The people there are friendly and it comes over in their pictures. They are totally friendly and welcoming, they can’t really believe that somebody is so interested in their lives, as it’s so normal for them; but it’s not for me of course. I go there from beginning to end for three days straight and am very sad when the three days are finally over and they’re gone. I sometimes have the urge to travel with them. It would be nice to get to know them more.

There are some bad accidents though and some people outside the scene say that it’s unfair on the animals, but I think that’s bullshit. Especially being there and seeing the young colts and bulls they ride, they only participate for two or three days in the four-month season and the rest of the time they are minding their own business out on the range.

What do you hope the public will take away from these images and what do you more specifically want to communicate to them?

From the Rodeo series? I hope they get an insight into this scene that is so far away and unfamiliar to their lives in the city, especially for many Western Europeans. Maybe even people who interact and work with horses here may not be aware and see that horses and cattle are handled differently.

The scene is rough, farming is rough and even the girls who ride in the rodeo scene are a bit rough too (laughs). It’s really crazy, they play country music the whole time and I catch myself thinking ‘Fuck! I’m in a total cliché! Jesus how can this be?’ Then the music starts and I’m getting really excited when the bulls come into the arena, it’s a super rush of a feeling. Then in the evening there’s a barn dance, which is fun, but so surreal for me.

How would you sum up what you do as a photographer?

That’s a difficult question, because I have so many different interests, I could never be filed in a specific drawer. So I’m interested in humankind, whatever they do. I definitely like shooting a kind of reportage photography of not so common groups and subjects. Things that have been and are still always there and existing somehow, but just not so many people are aware of it or know about it, apart from the people participating who are already totally into it.

Another aspect that attracts me to this form of photography is that you come into contact with so many different types of people, which pushes me to come out of myself and interact with them, because I want something from them but sometimes I don’t get it, so I have to be really, really flexible in what I do at those times when I’m trying to shoot something. Sometimes it’s difficult as I can be really shy when I’m trying to photograph something weird or just different in contrast with the day-to-day things that people do.

It can be a challenge for me to get into the people and how they think and why they do the things they do, but hopefully through that I may get really nice images as a result. You never know with something like that, as at times you have to work with what you get. When I first approach a subject I have an idea of how it should or could be, but then. when I go there, of course it’s completely different.

That’s the challenge; to go there and either way, at the end of the day, to get something memorable and nice out of it.

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