A while ago Jake Short, a historian from the United States, approached me. He was writing a book (“Magic Lantern Empire“) about Germany’s colonial history (a short but very influential episode here in Namibia) and was looking for a key visual for the book’s jacket. He came across a diorama that’s standing in the Swakopmund Museum and asked me to take some photos of it, which would “capture something of the strange simultaneity of reality and unreality characteristic of a diorama: painted background and three-dimensional toy figures.”.

After struggling a bit with reflecting glass surfaces (the diorama is behind window panes) I managed to get some nice results. Something completely different from the wedding photography I mostly do, but a job I really enjoyed.

Now here’s the result. The book is published by Cornell University Press (guess that’s as close as I will ever get to an Ivy League University 😉 ) and will be available from November 2012.

 

 

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