Nobody should have the wrong image of yourself

Over three decades the photographer Franklin Hollander has a simple but successful mission line: "To take a picture of people the way they are, you need to win their faith." Sometimes Rock Stars, other times Business Leaders or Talk Show Hosts have opened their faces for the photographer Franklin Hollander. And he showed us images that fitted to them - often we learned to know another person as we had in mind.

Hollander was born in Amsterdam. After working all over the United States and studying in Spain and Sweden, he finally took place in Hamburg in 1972. He studied visual communication, photography and graphics at the College of Fine Arts. Hollander financed his life by doing photojournalism for several newspapers and magazines. Immediately he was taking photos of current issues for "Der Spiegel", "Stern" and "Zeitmagazin" even before he had got his diploma. Moreover he won some awards for his sensitive reports and features with surprising perspectives.

Apart from common journalism Hollander concentrated his artwork on the social situation and character of persons to complete their portraits. And he began to live in the rhythm of other guys for a short time. In the early eighties Hollander was on the road with well known musicians like Alexis Corner, singer Elle Fitzgerald, bandleader Count Basie, Joe Jackson, Bob Geldof and also outstanding individual artists such as Jack Dupree and Jango Edwards. Hollander likes blues- and jazz music, is a singer and plays the harp.So he soon became a friend of the people he showed us. He had rare chances to take unique .images which were shown in interesting exhibitions all over the world.

Currently Hollander is working as a freelancer in Hamburg taking pictures of industrial leaders, for public relation campaigns and for several publications. In addition to his daily work for "Spiegel", "Stern", "Focus", "Konkret", "Wirtschaftswoche", "Handelsblatt", "Zeitmagazin", "Brigitte", "Fuer Sie" and others he collected his never shown pictures of buildings and flowers for two lifetime exhibitions in the near future.It was and is a pleasure to work with Franklin Hollander. If you want to know how people look at you, don’t look into a mirror. Let Franklin instead take some images of you and study his view. Nobody should have the wrong image of yourself!

Rainer B. Jogschies
The author was editor of TWEN magazine in the early eighties and often worked with Hollander, engaged by "Stern", "vorwärts", "Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt" and others.