It all began with a journey. Along the Amazon, 2000 kilometers. He captured his impressions with a camera, as he always did, because he wanted to document who he had met, where and when. Back then, Pit Buehler was still a hedge fund analyst, advised rich families on investments and only took photographs in his spare time. A student at the Academy of Art in Leipzig saw the pictures of the Amazon and showed them to his professor Helfried Strauss. He was so taken with them that he invited the Swiss «hobby photographer» to join his «photography master class». And Pit Buehler didn't hesitate for long because he felt «that I had to do this now.» This was in 2008, shortly before the outbreak of the major crisis in the financial sector, which, as an analyst, he had always «critically scrutinized», as he says.
≪The aesthetics of images≫
Since then, the business economist has been a professional photographer who is particularly interested in portraits of people and the «aesthetics of images». He is not interested in investigative photojournalism, he explains, but rather in individual people and the question of how he can translate their personality and charisma into a perfect visual language. «I'm curious about people and their stories. My goal every time is to get people to be themselves in the picture.» The 42-year-old from central Switzerland quickly became successful, continued his education and won several international awards. Today he works for various magazines, companies, private individuals and exhibitions. When asked about particularly impressive images and experiences, he mentions the portrait series about commodities trader Marc Rich, whom he photographed in 2013 shortly before his death. It was a «very intense encounter». On the other hand, he recalls a picture of two street children playing in a river in Bangladesh. «The water was full of garbage and dead animals, it stank like hell, yet the two of them radiated a childlike zest for life,» says Pit Buehler.
African adventure
And now he was on another exciting journey: In October 2013, he undertook a 15-day expedition to southern Ethiopia, more precisely to the border region with South Sudan and Kenya. He took around 400 portraits of African tribal members from eight different ethnic groups. His team consisted of a photo assistant, a driver who was also a cook, as well as various local tribal leaders, translators and - at times - armed guides and escorts. Some tribes could only be visited with the permission of the Ethiopian government. The negotiations, notes Buehler, were sometimes very long and exhausting, and it was necessary to get used to repeated demands for money. Olivier Bachmann, Director of Leica Camera AG, calls the result «exceptionally good.» Leica provided the photographer with the Leica S digital medium format camera for the «African Vogue» project. Buehler used only the Apo-Macro-Summarit-S 2.5/120 CS lens. He took all the pictures in natural daylight and without a tripod, at ISO 160, aperture F2.5 to 5.6 and a shutter speed of 1 /60 to 1/160. The S-Class, notes Buehler, is actually more suitable for the studio with a tripod and clean flash light. However, once you get used to its handling and freehand photography with it and always wait for the optimum lighting conditions («a maximum of three hours per day»), you get wonderful pictures: «The picture quality is exceptionally good, I'm very happy with the result. The Leica S-Class is actually the best you can get in medium format.» As a photographer, Pit Buehler is now taking things a little easier for the time being, with no major projects planned. There's a very simple reason for this: «I'm about to become a father for the second time, so priorities are shifting.» Nevertheless, the prediction is probably not too bold: the photographer will set off on a new journey at some point.
Pit Buehler's Africa portraits are still on display at the Leica Gallery in Nidau until 30.11.2014 http://blackocean.ch
