“I have had several contacts with the BFF over the past years. The first one being as I returned to art buying after several years of abstinence from photography, when I was admittedly rather disoriented about the development of the photography scene in Germany. This is why the first thing I did was to leaf through the numerous BFF publications and discover both familiar and as yet unknown faces with unknown works. A good start from which we have been in close and regular contact – even beyond the realms of photography. And in an industry with such a fast pace as advertising it is good to have a reliable and steadfast partner – whom we have found in the BFF.”

Susanne Conrad
Head of Creative Services
Grey Worldwide

“The only thing that annoys me about the BFF books is that I always have to remove hundreds of ‘post-its’ after I’ve leant them to my creative people.”

Ekkehard Frenkler
CD
Serviceplan Gruppe, Munich

“Over the past decades photography has taken advantage of two revolutions to stake out new claims. It has achieved art status and competes with painting and graphic design in museums and on the art market. This new basis has differentiated and sharpened the criteria for dealing with photography.

Photographic picture concepts between reportage and staging have become more complex. Professional photography has been the motor behind this development but has benefited from it to an equal extent. The second revolution in the form of processing digital images has – primarily alongside the change in the production processes – also considerably expanded the possibilities of manipulating imagery. Staging images on the screen does not only allow more freedom for fantasy but also for its design. Design in photography was one of the motives for founding the BFF – Bund Freischaffender Foto-Designer – and aspiring to designed images has remained a challenge and target for its members until the present day. A new picture culture in professional photography. The demands for high quality are again and again the subject of discussions at symposia and exhibitions and not least present in the wide ranging publications of the pictures by the BFF’s members which are made into tomes of professional photography in Germany every year.

Professionalism is enhanced by up to date information on economic and legal topics which the BFF always presents to its members. The BFF offers initial orientation and exemplary models for newcomers above all.”


Prof. Manfred Schmalriede
President of the DFA Deutsche Fotografische Akademie

“A club consisting of a collection of more or less eccentric individual fighters, armed only with a camera, cannot exist for long. And yet the BFF does and not only its members are pleased about this but also everyone for whom photos are more than just merchandise being traded on the Internet.”

Christina Hufgard
Head of Art Buying
Ogilvy & Mather Werbeagentur

“In about 1896 the Belgian photographer Alexandre took a picture with the title “Avant-garde in the ravine” which was to be reprinted in almost all of the major art and photographic periodicals over the years to come. In 1911 the French officer and poet Guilleaume Apollinaire coined the phrase avant-garde for art which considered itself to be at the very forefront of developments in the market and in style; he probably knew the photograph. I always remember the story about this expression when I think about the BFF: I was there as a trainee in 1969 when Otto Steinart eloquently announced the inauguration of an association for freelance photo designers at a meeting of the “Gesellschaft für Phtographie”. Design has arrived in our everyday life as the avant-garde has in art – and in the German-speaking world this is to no small part due to the BFF.

Today this claim means to keep the pole in place once it has been set high, even if words no longer mean as much but images do not yet mean everything. Internally, the BFF is a professional association of the finest kind, which helps its members with all the assistance that a society of this ilk can provide. Externally, the BFF represents a medium of imagery, irrespective of whether the technique is still called photography or is already called something completely different. What remains is the design which, like all the avant-garde, needs a solid foundation so that it does not end up in the ravine.”

Prof. Dr. Rolf Sachsse
Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar
Lehrstuhl Designtheorie und -Geschichte

"Up until a few years ago I still thought that the BFF was as old and encrusted as stale bread. But now hardly any other association in Germany spontaneously comes to mind which does such a lot to promote young German photography.
…. What a good job I was wrong."

Susanne Nagel
Head of Art Buying
Jung von Matt/basis Hamburg

“In the era of scrapping, scanning, synthetics and the worldwide archives of the Internet, it is becoming ever more important to fly the flag of individuality, of one’s very personal view of things. For this very many thanks to the photographers and the BFF.”

Thomas Feicht
INSTANT and President of the
Deutscher Designer Club (DDC)

is the big fat book,
the highest instance,
indispensable,
likes to be involved with itself,
is the ADC of photography.”

Felix Glauner
Chief Creative Officer
Euro RSCG Werbeagentur, Düsseldorf

“40 years of the BFF. That is an anniversary to be proud of. And at Kodak we are proud to have accompanied the BFF and with it professional photography throughout this entire period. 40 years of the BFF – that also means 40 Yearbooks. Every year at KODAK we eagerly await the new BFF Yearbook. The form has not changed over all the years we have been with it as the BFF’s industrial partner, but the content certainly has. That is always exciting and conveys an overview of zeitgeist and contemporary picture language of professional photography. Whether it be People, Transportation or Still Life, everything is there and it simply makes you want to have more. Congratulations!”

Lars Fiedler
KODAK Marketing Manager Film Capture,
Europe, Middle East & Africa Region

“What I want most is to have a surprise. I would like to have my appetite whet by just looking. We have had enough of the intellectual and cool. I would like to have less of the conformist, less fear of making a mistake, especially amongst the juniors. Please show me your aesthetics and cast away the trendy!”

Rossita Markowitz
Head of Art Buying
TBWA Düsseldorf

“No matter what the future of photography holds in store – one thing will certainly stay the same – the creative mind behind the camera.”

Prof. Ivica Maksimovic
Dean / Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar
Maksimovic & Partners Agentur für Werbung & Design

1. The BFF is just as important or unimportant as the ADC or DDC. But if it didn’t exist, it would be even more difficult to endure our controller-dominated society.

2. The BFF is still the absolute yardstick, because its members continue to set the standards.

3. BFF yes! However else would talented young photographers manage to leap into the wonderful brutality of the world.”

Uli Weber
Creative Consulting

"A new presentation for the Web – a small change and an expression of the fact that the BFF is changing. Since I have been an art buyer (almost 20 years now) it has always been such small individual things which produced a great change overall.

A lot of things have changed over the past years. In the era of image banks and royalty-free motifs, the photographers’ struggle for jobs has got harder. Which is why I consider an institution such as the BFF to be all the more important as it gives the photographers a certain support and the possibility for exchanging ideas. I am certainly not the only art buyer who always looks in the BFF’s yearbooks when she is looking for a certain style or photographer. And that, by the way, is one of the things that hasn’t ever changed. Although perhaps I’ll be searching on the Internet more in future.

And I am certainly not the only art buyer who has been able to make the acquaintance of such interesting photographers as Oliviero Toscani, Elliot Erwitt, Bettina Rheims or Sheila Metzner at the BFF symposia.

The BFF has also introduced me to unknown names. I am always pleased to see young photographers who are attempting something new and who take a new departure full of idealism. I often become acquainted with their work in the BFF junior booklet which has been available for a few years now (and which was also one of those many meaningful changes).

When the BFF celebrated its 30th anniversary, Kurt Weidemann asked the question: “Were things better in the past, or just different? Everyone only has a subjective experience of time and the zeitgeist, and judgments of times change, discover and reject the bygone.” My own subjective experience of the zeitgeist tells me that the BFF has always managed quite well to maintain its high quality and to put German photography in high esteem abroad too. I hope that it always does manages to separate what is really new from the merely fashionable."

Bettina Blum
Art Buying and TV Department
McCann Erikson Munich

“I see the BFF not just in connection with presenting ever new worlds of images but above all as an important information platform (techniques, legal advice, forum, professional exchange) for all photographers. What is more, the BFF gives an impulse to young photographers and encourages them to give their best.”

Doro Göbels
Rockenfeller & Goebels
Fotografenagentur Düsseldorf

“Would you like to have a different definition of the BFF for a change? Just take up one of the silver-coloured Yearbooks from the golden eighties. Here there is a BFF preamble right at the beginning which makes even the last weakling realize who he is dealing with here. Precisely, with the “professional organisation of creative advertising, fashion and industrial photographers” [sic!] Isn’t that wonderfully old-fashioned? This still had to be spelt out and documented then, nowadays it has an almost charming ring to it. (We would like to know more… ) By the way: Eons before that, this type of institution was respectfully called a “guild”. It goes without saying that the era of guilds, preambles and weaklings is over and gone. And as we well know, today it suffices to have just those three letters which have long-since evolved to be-come an international brand name. The fact that the BFF always has to look forwards certainly lies in the nature of photo design. Nonetheless: mastering 40 years is not only honourable. Let us put it like this: Your professional organisation has, whether it likes it or not, become a significant chapter in the photographic history of this country…”

Dr. Christoph Schaden
Curator, Cologne   

“A big 2-0 anniversary for something well-rounded – This is how the BFF Promotion Prize is taking off into its third decade. And even 20 years after making its first appearance it is still just as interesting as it was right at the beginning, because its principle is timeless: Collecting the best final degree work in photography. Everyone’s a winner with this type of promotion for young photographers: The public sees first-class photography, the young photographers are rewarded with a incomparable boost to their career; and the photo media take note of top talents who would perhaps never have been discovered otherwise.”

Andrea Gothe
‚stern‘ Photodirector, Hamburg