In 2012, it was 200 years ago since the first edition of
Brothers Grimm Children's and Household Tales; well in time for this bicentennial, in November 2011 our series of capprox. 60 large-format scenes depicting a selection of these stories was published as a photo gallery on our Moonlake Editions Website.
Today, Grimm's Fairy Tales no longer are viewed upon as just
children's stories - actually, thy have never been so. They deal with
universal themes and conflicts, connected with getting grown up, with the search
for a partner, with love relationships. They deal with hope, truthfulness and
affection as well as bad luck, betray and estrangement. They describe the luxury
of the King's palace as well as the modest hut of the wood cutter. In our
introductory essay, we demonstrate how various tales can be attributed to the
different basic life themes.
Our plates add an extra dimension to the well-known stories, by exaggerating or reversing the accustomed roles. For every tale, the plot is condensed into a single dramatic scene, often throwing a new light on the narrative. Over 50 scenes were photographed, more than 200 models participated in this project, which was produced over a four year period. The size of our image files varies from 2000 x 200 cm till 300 x 450 cm at 300 dpi, so that all details are worked out crisply. By placing the characters before a white background, their singularity is underlined.
As already indicated in our profile: Many photographers have created their personal interpretation of Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderella, some even have created a series of ten-twelve images, but no photo artist ever has attempted to visualise such a broad selection from the over 200 tales published by Brothers Grimm. And from all artists ever dealing with Grimm's Fairy Tales, only a few have combined the well-known stories with nude photography. As it is, both the scope and the style of our project are unique and from the many comments we have received till now, we have no doubt this book project will find its way to a large public.