Apache Gals

To understand the titel you might want to read more about Apache Dance. The name derieved from early 20th century parisian street gangs that were famous for their cruelty but also for their unique style. They appear to have been quite peacock-ish with their outfits.

The famous dance includes a fight between a gangster (or pimp) and a prostitute and became part of the popular culture of the first half of the 20th century. If you do a search on youtube you will find many movies with it ranging from comedies and musicals to crime flics. While I love the style of the costumes and the dance moves I felt uncomfortable with the violence against women thing. I decided to give it a twist and let the women fight back. Their attitude resembles Riot Grrl comics like "Tank Girl" now.

Yes, it still includes violence but if society still blames the victims of sexism if the don't defend themselves... well the guys were "asking for it", right?

Die Groszstadt - Part II

Maybe you can see it is also a tribute to George Grosz (1893-1959) hence the spelling in the original title. It doesn't translate too well into english because we have this funny "ß". George Grosz changed the spelling from Groß into Grosz because he wanted to let it appear less german and more international. Same with John Heartfield who was born as Helmut Herzfeld. I did just read that a possible translation for Kremers could be Chandler....but then again: What would Raymond do?

Die Groszstadt

 Hänsel und Gretel in der Groszstadt
 (Hansel and Gretel in the big city)

Excerpt from illustration project at the university, 2010, during the lectureship of Lars Henkel. We had to come up with a new setting for the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. So in the story we don't have bread crumbs, a wood or a witch. Not even a oven I did choose an early 1930s city and an evil icecream selling clown as the witch.

Lady in red

Unpublished drawing

Viel zu hot!

It is done. My illustrated book called „VIEL ZU HOT!“ tells the story of three young people who listened to hot jazz and swing music in the late 1930s and early 40s in Wiesbaden, Germany. The text is taken from interviews I have done with contemporary witnesses earlier this year. I feel one could fill many books with the things they experienced. I did choose some of the anecdotes that relate to my topic: Swing music and being young in the Third Reich when almost everything was dominated by the Nazi ideology. In the near future I am looking for a way to publish my work. This pages are a preview of the book.