Matthias Leberle
- Where are you from?
Kassel, Germany.
- How did you start in photography?
I bought my first ever camera when I turned 30 and moved to Kassel to learn the basics &document the new surroundings.
- How would you describe your style?
I think that´s a question that needs to be answered by others who watch my works - not the author.
- What inspires your work?
In short, inspiration comes from my everyday life such as nature, music, movies, a book, encounters or conversations with people surrounding me, paintings/photographs in a museum, emotions, dreams, etc. Sometimes it is also (technical) curiosity that inspires my work - for example: how something will look like when photographed with a certain type of film/lens/camera format/lighting situation. So I guess I also like to experiment with these different types of camera gear although I know this should always be considered as the least important part when taking a photograph that lasts.- What do you love to photograph?
People, scenes, Patterns, Geometry, cinematic-like scenes, …
- Your technical process/technical choice, what cameras do you use?
- At the moment I process black & white and x-ray films of all sorts by myself in my small bathroom. Colour film I send to a lab develop it by myself.
- After processing the films I scan them and remove the dust.
- Since I mostly shoot film there is not much besides adjusting colors, contrast and brightness.
- Most of the look results out of which film and lens/format I chose before taking the photo.
- Sometimes I also restore the negative of peel-apart instant films (for example the FP100C instant film from Fuji) and scans them.
- The process is called “negative reclaim” and the scan of those negatives sometimes results in some very interesting colours.
- My gear varies from different analogue film cameras (6×6, 6×7 medium format) to 4×5″ and 8×10″ large format combined with some standard, but mainly modified lenses. Over the course of the years my shelves have turned into some museum for old lenses and cameras. For ideas that require a lot of try-and-error I often choose to start out with digital medium format (6x4.5cm) first before I (most of the times) switch to one of my analogue formats.
