Fashion designer and photographer Anna-Sophie Berger started taking pictures with an analog camera when she was young—not that she still isn’t being 22 years old but has already worked with big fashion names like Veronique Branquinho and Bernard Willhelm, has received awards, and participated in major fashion exhibits. She explains that analog felt more real to her than digital pictures. And it can’t get any more real than when she combines her photography with her fashion that’s inspired by anything in relation to philosophy, geometry, and human beings.

You take inspiration from a gamut of intellectual designers, artists, and philosophers such as Malewitsch, Vanessa Beecroft, and even Akira Kurosawa. Yet you’ve mentioned your creative process is more impulsive and playful than thought-out. What role does theory and concept play in that process?
What seems like a logical contradiction—having a mindset that is based on a theoretical, conceptual idea but working impulsively and allowing yourself to try and play—is really the opposite for me. There is my ideas and concepts, my philosophy of life, abstract aesthetic ideas as well as more pronounced moral principles, like the value of human on the one hand. They are if you will internalized, often reviewed and constant subject of discussion. I discuss a lot, I write journals and essays. To pick one, my idea of the female body, for example: the aesthetic end result of a garment created while working spontaneously and fast incarnates my theoretical ideas and reflections of the female body itself; its theory turned into sensual praxis if you will. Of course it is not like a text, that says exactly what you think, it’s a reflection rather, an image, and even if the message is not written there so everyone reads the same, it transports a view of life, that can then be estimated by pictures, installations and so on.

In relation, where and how does the abstract fit into your work?
The abstract is the logical consequence of the elaboration of a concrete idea. It is like a reflection on the thought that was before merely logical but maybe not sensual. Human beings need both the sensual and intellectual part, to experience beauty.

What would you bring or how would you survive on a deserted island?
What I would bring, I guess my camera, and things to write and tailor. But if I could choose, I wouldn’t stay long. I love nature but I love people more and I need them. If I couldn’t leave, that would be a nightmare. To stay alive, I would try to find my way, but nobody can think that through. Humans are sociable. Anyone would have troubles staying sane. Maybe try to be with animals. And project all sort of stuff on them…

I was also very happy to read you were listening to Wes Anderson soundtracks. Lovely. Describe the relationship between the aural and visual stigmas in your life/work.
As most artists, I am obsessed with anything that I find beauty in. I love music, overall classic piano, but also electronic to dance-’til-I-can’t sounds. I love food and smells; I am very sensitive to good and bad ones. But all visual strikes me of course. Anything—details, spelling mistakes on elevator doors, wrongly buttoned shirts, fights—sometimes it gets so much that I get in a state of physical stress to see it all, name it, note it. I love watching the near surrounding from a means of transportation, trees floating by so fast that the eyes can’t get hold of them.

They say artists create because they fear destruction. What are some of your fears and, in contrast, your fantasies?
I fear death; I would like to overcome it. It’s one of the most awful but accepted tragedies of humankind. So, yes, I fear destruction in that sense. But I don’t think I create only because of that. Fantasies… I would say I am very happy. Some sudden outbreaks of fear or jealousy, some curses to someone who is doing better things than me, but it always fades and brings back a sense of joy for being able to do what I do. Living forever then maybe…

anna-sophie-berger.com
Photographed by Katarina Soskic
Introduction by Reena Mesias
Interview by Giano D. Dionisio

For the full story, grab a copy of STATUS February 2012 issue

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