It started with a shoe...
In 1978, when I was in my vocational training as a photographer, the semester exercise for us students was the issue: “The shoe!” Since a long time, I had noticed an elderly man selling flowers on Zurich's most expensive Bahnhofstrasse: It was Hans Krüsi, as I later learned. To me, he looked a little bit like a Clochard (tramp) and his heavy working shoes would have been perfect for my exercise, in which I wanted to compare a pair of really used and worn out shoes with a pair of Ballerinas .
As I wanted to photograph them in the studio, I asked him if he could lend it to me. When I returned the next day to Bahnhofstrasse, he was already waiting for me with his shoes in a bag, ready to take them away. After photographing them, I returned him the shoes and started photographing him, as the owner … He was a very grateful model and posed for several pictures with fun and wit. In summer 1978 I made a Reportage about him for a local weekly Zurich Newspaper. But the picture of his shoes, the one that started it all, has disappeared: I cannot find it in my archives anymore …
About the "truth" of photographs …
On one picture of Krüsi, you can see a big bottle of red wine, standing on the ground. What does the beholder conclude – and what will be carved out forever in art history? "Ah! Mr. Krüsi had a drinking problem – no wonder, a typical tramp, a clochard." Reality looks different: After the photo shooting of his shoes, it was me to bring him this bottle of wine (presuming … see above!) as a thank-you. Only later somebody told me, that he did not drink alcohol – at least at that time. I feel quite sorry about this misleading "document" …
