‘With potential clients and commissioning editors in particular, it’s important to have a big, great project that opens doors.’
Graduate Maria Feck gives an insight into her working life in an interview.
Maria Feck was born in July 1981. She studied communication design in Hamburg and photojournalism at Hochschule Hannover and the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Aarhus. The photojournalist has won awards including the n-ost reportage prize and the Hansel-Mieth-Preis/digital, and has received several grants from VG Bild-Kunst. With the digital storytelling projects she produced for SPIEGEL ONLINE over the years, Maria Feck became one of the pioneers of the form in the German-speaking world.
In 2017 Maria Feck gave an interview to the magazine ‘Wir Machen Das’. She was asked how photojournalists can avoid a voyeuristic gaze. She replied that it can be avoided by spending time with the people you are photographing: ‘If I have people’s trust, I always manage to capture emotions that everyone can relate to.’
Maria Feck described her process for taking a good portrait in similar terms. What matters, she said, is closeness to the person being photographed – and that applies to writing as well as photography. ‘It’s important to spend time together. You should also be there without the camera sometimes, listen to people and build trust.’ For a good portrait, the person has to feel comfortable with her as a photographer.
