The Uckermark Shoot

Behind the Scenes: We were lucky enough to recruit legendary Berlin photographer Florian Hetz to photograph some members of the FUNDAMENTAL team in a house we designed in the Uckermark (rural east Germany) for our new September 2024 cataloge. We chose Hetz because of his inspiring relationship to skin and the body. So we took a lot of our clothes off...

The Location the house we designed (we work as architects parallel to our work as designers) is a contemporary take on the classic cottage typology, with a steep pitched roof and a shady, wraparound porch. it invites the outside in, but keeps a strong, traditional concept of shelter. If I had 20 seconds to describe the work of Florian Hetz , and I wasn't too proud to fall back on lazy cliche, I would say that is work is a cross between Caravaggio, Robert Maplethorpe and Wolfgang Tilmans.

But forget that, because that doens't do him justice. Hero Florian Hetz Florian Hetz is a photographer based in Berlin. Primarily working with male nudes, his work evokes touch and physicality more that a photograph should be able to.

There was a certain amount of risk in working with a photographer who is all about the human body. We threw him into the very different challenge of capturing hard, shiny reflective surfaces, but we were blown away by the results. To be clear, none of the shots in this email are his , they are from our camera phones during the shoot.

The results will be launched early september. For a shoot this personal, this vulnerable and naked, we didn't want to work with professional models and stylists, which could feel exploitative and maybe even pornographic. 3 Fundamentalists volunteered for the shoot (it was actually Alice's idea) and we shacked up with the photographer in the house for a long, hot summer weekend.

We cooked, ate and worked out together, taking turns styling the shoot and modelling. It was intense, exhausting and unforgettable. The involvement of Alice Bard was particularly special, because she is leaving design the team after 6 years of incredible, vital contribution (to go live with her love in Switzerland) and it means the world to us to have captured her visually with the products she helped make before saying our farewells.