JIM HAYNES

Michael KELLNER

Photographs

e-mail: mhukellner@gmx.de

visit Michael Kellner's Website

Took a class in photography in high school and watched way too often Blow Up, which led to working for six months in a photo studio in my hometown after graduating from school. And that was it with photographic training.

Moved to Hamburg 1977 and got more and more involved with literature. But photography always accompanied my professional life in the world of books as an editor, book seller, publisher, translator, writer and curator. As I never took photography as a profession, I was always free to shoot what I wanted, the people who I worked with, the people who were important to me, the people I loved - no wonder most of them writers and artists.

Translating William Burroughs made me join the 50th anniversary conference on publication of "Naked Lunch" early July in Paris and I felt blessed that Jim put me up for a couple of days.

I was thrilled when Jim asked me to accompany him to a reception at John Calder's house in Paris.
Another friend of ours, the late Ted Joans, had always insisted I should meet John Calder but it never worked out back then some 30 years ago, when I was Ted's German publisher, translator and collaborator, John Calder having been his English publisher in the Sixties.
So I took my camera along, but as I didn't know anybody except Jim it needed some talking and a few glasses of wine to warm up.
The party moved from the living room down into the cellar where miles of rough bookshelves opened up an almost unbelievable kingdom of literature, and the king himself was amidst his subjects.
Later on everybody meandered back upstairs to the kitchen and there was no doubt that this was a great night with wonderful people - which is all what the photos are about.