Johnny de Brest

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Olaf Enkrodt (* 1963 in Nordhorn ) is a German artist who appears under the stage name Johnny de Brest .

Life

Johnny de Brest grew up in Lower Saxony and Lütjensee / Ahrensburg near Hamburg . He first worked in the printing industry for a few years . For a time he lived and worked in Münster, Westphalia . At the age of 27, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall , he moved to Berlin .

As early as the 1980s, de Brest began taking photos at parties, trips and concerts, staging fashionable portraits and exhibiting the results under his real name. Since around 1995/1996 his artistic activities have been running under the name Johnny de Brest.

Work

Photo novel Vladracul

In 1991/1992 Johnny de Brest began working on the photo novel Vladracul , which has not yet been shown in Germany , and which is based on Bram Stoker's Dracula . Filming of Vladracul lasted until 1996.

The idea for Vladracul developed in the summer of 1991. Originally under the working title Nosferatu , a first script was written by autumn / winter 1992, which still comprised 15 chapters. A version revised several times in 1994, 1995, 1996 and 2002 reduced the number of chapters to 12.

The main location of the photo novel is Berlin. Vladracul shows photos from Auschwitz and Birkenau . Together with these pictures, Johnny de Brest took a total of 15,000 photos over a period of five years in Berlin and the surrounding area, Güstrow , and Krakow .

The photographic artwork was exhibited abroad. The Washington Diplomat wrote: The photo novella is an intriguing and unique exhibit that shocks, disturbs and arouses the viewers interest ( the photo novel is a fascinating and unique exhibition that shocks, worries and attracts the viewer's attention ). In Germany, the press reacted in part with praise, wrote Heinrich Wefing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung : Vladracul… bloody, bizarre and beautiful. Above all, the photographer knows how to make Berlin the main actor in his production ... His Berlin is a dangerous and exciting place ...

The Washington City Paper noted: Some of the man-monster creatures recall the films of Matthew Barney, and the lurid local-color details — Mina Harker gets gang-raped at Marlene Dietrich ’s grave — suggest a concept album that David Bowie never got around to making during his Berlin phase. (A soundtrack of late-'70s Bowie, Iggy, and Eno would be apt. ).

Foto-Fix-World

The death of Kurt Cobain in 1994 motivated Johnny de Brest to work on Foto-Fix-World , recordings from passport photo machines, the central theme of which is stars and media images . The world called him a chameleon in front of the camera and noticed that others have already climbed behind the vending machine curtain. Andy Warhol about ..

Between February and approx. June 1997 the photo-fix street posters We Crash Them All and We Shot Them All by the artists Phoinissa and Johnny de Brest, who mainly live in Bombay , attracted attention in Berlin , Munster , New York City and Los Angeles . For example, film actress Rachel Weisz had herself photographed with the We Shot Them All poster and Courtney Love is in possession of one of the original photographs that were used as a template for the We Crash Them All poster . Both posters later fueled conspiracy theories , as the We Crash Them All poster showed a car wreck and Princess Diana was killed in a car wreck in August 1997 , the second We Shot Them All poster referred to a rampage and in July 1997 the fashion designer Gianni Versace victim of Amok -Läufers or serial offender.

War fashion fake

Since 1997 Johnny de Brest has been working on a long-term project called War-Fashion-Fake . The trigger for the new work is said to have been the death of the British Princess Diana . The project was expanded associatively by Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 . In terms of content, War-Fashion-Fake is a work of art that combines news reports, breaking news and media images. Parts of this new work can already be seen on Johnny de Brest's website as a simulation of a news page .

Exhibitions (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Washington Diplomat (Lisa Carroll): Dracula Revisited. German Photographer Depicts Vampireís Story in Intriguing Photo Novella ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.washdiplomat.com
  2. ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung : Berlin pictures from the machine , on June 22, 2002 (No. 142/25 R *)
  3. ^ The Washington City Paper (Mark Jenkins): Vladracul
  4. ↑ Die Welt : Kick when clicking , January 8, 2003
personal data
SURNAME Brest, Johnny de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Enkrodt, Olaf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Nordhorn