Tino Zimmermann, Develompents, 2024

“This is by far my most ambitious work to date, and although I’ve worked hard not to become a one-hit wonder (that’s why it has to become a hit first, right?) I’m not sure I’ll ever do anything comparable in my life. If you have ever made a work of art, you know that there are what could be seen as a set of rules that emerge from the individual work: They are like the rules of a game that only show themselves when you play.

I worked on this book for so long until every question about every aspect that emerged was answered such that there was no better solution. And it was about many of these aspects, since it was over 10,000 analog photographs taken over a period of more than 7 years, and then a book with over 500 fully designed pages – no filler. From photo selection, to sequencing, pacing, story telling, chapters, layout, individual pages, page layout, color correction, text, fonts, meaning and message, format, paper quality and weight, print quality and cover: I worked on it for a long time until I could find better answers for everything. Absolutely no compromises were made on artistic qualities, no costs were spared: It is 100 percent what I had ideally envisioned. I wouldn’t have wanted it to be published by a publishing house just because I thought it would hurt the cover or the design of the book. That’s how valuable this work is to me.

It appeals to everyone who loves photography and can empathize with how to learn the craft themselves. But most of all it addresses those who know the feeling of being lost in this world, which too often seems impossible for creative personalities to develop fully and freely.

The book deals with these topics in such a way as to show some connections between things: The feeling of being lost and identifying with everything separate, the inability to develop as a creative person, and the predisposition to addiction problems and mental illness.I tell this story through the book itself, through the texts but also through my personal story.I started photography as a means of distraction when I was struggling with drug-induced psychosis.Taking pictures and waiting for film to develop became an obsession that got me through the worst of it. Later, when photographing everything was an inseparable part of my life, I documented the depths of my depression.Today, I still sometimes have problems, but I don’t take these kinds of photos anymore.”