Erich Lessing outside his gallery in Vienna. Photo (c) Philipp Rank / philipprank.com

“People ask me which camera I used to take my pictures. I always say it doesn’t matter, for a good picture is up to the eye, not up to the camera.”

akg-images photographer Erich Lessing turns 90 this year. Born in Vienna on 13 July 1923, the young Lessing emigrated to Israel in 1939 and became a self-taught kindergarten and British army photographer. After the war he returned to Austria, went on assignments for the Associated Press and, in 1951, became one of the first Magnum photographers.

Well-known for his evocative reportage photography of post-war Europe and behind-the-scenes portraits of personalities such as Herbert von Karajan, Julie Andrews and Gregory Peck, Lessing went on to build a vast archive of museum photography and published several books drawing on his own material. Aged 90, he still runs the Erich Lessing Photo Archive with the enthusiasm of a man half his age, and this is where I was lucky enough to learn the ropes of picture research.

When I first met Erich Lessing, it was to accompany him and his assistant Philipp Rank on a visit to the printing company of the limited edition of his newest book, a history of composer Joseph Haydn. It featured Lessing photographs of original manuscripts, scores, artefacts and portraits related to Haydn.

“We had better get this out as soon as possible, before the Haydn year is over, don’t you think?” said Lessing as he sampled slipcase design options in a warehouse that day in January 2009. He wore a brown suit jacket and his signature red scarf.

As I improvised and stumbled to raise the questions of cost and print run, Lessing grinned like a proud grandfather and said, “Let’s talk about it back at the office. But first take Julia to the Gasthaus for lunch so she can meet the team. ”

And so what I thought was my interview was essentially my first day at work as Lessing’s new office assistant. Working for Lessing meant I became part of an intimate family business. The boss himself was constantly on the move, checking in with us several times a day. His wife Traudl, herself a woman with a remarkable journalistic career to look back on, made editorial decisions and was often called upon to remember dates and details of picture captions. There were many, many lunches at the Gasthaus. And if the weather was particularly lovely Lessing would sometimes tell us to close early and go enjoy the sun.

If this sounds unconventional, consider the way the best photo opportunities are created. Throughout his varied career, Erich Lessing followed his instincts and reaped the rewards of his own initiative. If he had played by the rules, there would be no iconic images of the 1956 revolts in Budapest, no unusual angle on President Charles de Gaulle’s visit to Algeria. Out of all the photographs taken of the Austrian State Treaty in 1955, Lessing’s is the one that struck a chord: he was the only one who took to the balcony at Belvedere Palace and pointed the camera back at the jubilant crowd.

In 2012 when Lessing was 89, the opening of a new Photo Gallery sparked plenty of media attention. Ever the crowd pleaser, Erich Lessing was interviewed for countless articles and appeared on national television demonstrating tricks – not with the camera, but with his impressive eyebrows.

If you’re ever in Vienna, be sure to visit and see the latest photo exhibition at Weihburggasse 22. If you’re lucky, you might even meet the man himself.

A child in North Korea, 1989: © akg-images / Pansegrau

My young niece spent a fair amount of Christmas Day last year blaring out Psy’s Gangnam Style as loudly as she dared and asking us all to interrupt our Christmas Dinner to watch her “do the Gangnam Style dance”. By the end of December 2012 most of us had heard enough Gangnam Style for a lifetime, thank you very much, but there she was, defiantly galopping around the living room much to the bafflement of assembled grandparents, uncles and aunts.

This week, South Korea’s most famous pop star Psy premièred his (cough) long-awaited (cough) follow-up single, Gentleman. (You can click on that link to hear it although, if you’ve heard Gangnam Style, there’s no need: it doesn’t stray far from the original formula.) In other Korean news, Psy’s neighbours to the north and their new, young leader have stepped up their threats towards the USA and South Korea. North Korea has always been fond of rhetoric and bellicose pronouncements against the south but recent posturing from North Korea seems to have become more intense and threatening than ever before.

North Korea is fascinating because we know so little about it. Psy’s global domination of the pop charts in 2012 may seem unimportant, but it underlines just how different the two Koreas are. South Korean K-pop is flourishing, while North Korea seems to have not only an Iron Curtain surrounding it, but an Iron Curtain with a lead lining. Journalists piece together the snippets of information they know about the young leader Kim Jong-un and his advisers: his aunt Kim Kyong-hui especially so, not only because she’s the sister of Kim Jong-il and daughter of Kim Il-sung, but because she juggles her role as Secretary for Organisation of the Workers’ Party of Korea with her other job: running Pyongyang’s first and only fast-food burger bar.

For a country so closed off to the West, North Korea is surprisingly well represented in the akg archives. There are images from the East German ddrbildarchiv as well as from Russia’s RIA Novosti, perhaps not surprising given their Communist histories, but we also have series of colour images taken two decades apart by two different photographers. German photographer Erhard Pansegrau visited North Korea in 1989 and in 2009 Alain Noguès made a similar trip, visiting Pyongyang as well as the demilitarised zone that acts as an uneasy barrier between north and south.

What is so astonishing about the photographs is how little has changed in twenty years. The Grand People’s Study House in Pyongyang may have computer terminals now and people may carry mobile phones while admiring the Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification, but the personality cult of former leaders remains and the sense of control and order in the state is palpable, even in still photographs. What North Koreans know about what is happening close by in Seoul and what they actually think about it is anyone’s guess. We can only wait and hope that the warmongering dies down and that North Korea retreats back behind its curtain of iron and lead before any nuclear mistakes are made.

I almost missed out on a job with akg-images. The post of picture researcher had already been advertised and the job offered to and accepted by another applicant before I had even heard of akg. Luckily for me, the prospective new employee had to pull out for personal reasons before starting work and the position was re-advertised in the printed version of The Guardian. I am not even sure what, if any, website the jobs section of The Guardian had in 2002. Certainly, when I first started here, the internet was a relatively unknown (and somewhat clunky) presence in the office and I am pretty sure the research team now working in our London office is bored of listening to my stories of “what it was like when I was a researcher”: faxes! motorcycle couriers! filing cabinets filled with prints! loss fees! six-week deadlines on picture lists!

There are also plenty of stories about researchers coming into the office to do their own research at our enormous light table. The researcher would arrive with a stack of papers in his or her hands, with no laptop to help and would plunge headlong into our filing system, pulling out transparencies and prints to be parcelled up to take home. On one memorable occasion a researcher brought along, quite unexpectedly, a lapdog, which dutifully sat under the light table until its mistress had finished fishing through our files.

Paris (France), 1st Arr., Louvre / Palais du Louvre, (palace of the French kings; built 1546-1868; since 1793 a museum). – English boys on a school trip to France are taking photographs of the Cour Napoléon des Louvre; in the background the Pavillon Turgot. – Photo, 3rd April 1958. © akg-images

Now of course, the same researcher would be undertaking the same research from the comfort of her own home, saving herself and her dog the trek to Fulham. With the complete shift to digital we see comparatively little of the researchers who use our images and nowadays even a phone call is rare, so used are we to emailing and ordering online. Which is why it’s so exciting to be attending fotofringe in London for the third year in a row. Fairs like fotofringe, its unofficial predecessor the BAPLA Picture Buyers’ Fair, and its American equivalent Visual Connections, are incredibly important to us for putting faces to names and actually meeting the people with whom we work on a daily basis. We try to attend fairs like these as often as time and finances will allow, and fotofringe’s back to basics approach to the fair with simple tables and a minimal amount of banners and branding makes it a financially rewarding fair at which to exhibit.

I think it’s equally rewarding for the picture professional visiting, too: elaborately built stands like the ones you see at the Frankfurt or London Book Fairs are impressive but also a little intimidating to some people. A number of researchers have said to us that they found the simple, straightforward layout of fotofringe much more conducive to impromptu meetings and  discussions about the new collections and photographers recently added to the akg roster… as well as the odd bit of picture business gossip!

So, if you’re in London on 24 April, please do register online to attend this year’s fotofringe. Professional image buyers attend for free so sign up and come and visit us on table H2/1 or contact us to make an appointment for a meeting.

The Tailor (‘Il Tagliapanni’)

“A man with a beard is a man with a secret.”

I vividly remember my late grandfather imparting this pearl of wisdom to me and my father when I was growing up. I also remember the look on my dad’s (bearded) face as my granddad said it.

Although my grandfather remained carefully shaven all through his adult life up to his death, I imagine that most men experiment at least once with growing some facial hair. It might be through laziness: shaving, or at least shaving properly, involves a fair amount of time and effort. A few years ago I treated a friend to a birthday shaving lesson at one of London’s traditional barber shops. The lesson involved lots of hot towels to prepare the skin and soften the bristles, copious amounts of shaving cream (applied with, whisper it, a brush made from badger hair) and numerous passes over the skin with a box-fresh razor blade.

On holiday in Turkey I have also allowed myself the inexpensive luxury of a old-fashioned shave, complete with the traditional Turkish method for dealing with stray hairs: singeing them with a naked flame.

At the moment, I am experimenting with growing a beard and it has been quite a fascinating experience so far. I last tried growing a beard in my early twenties and quickly gave up once I realised that, as someone who is not naturally hirsute, it looked like someone had glued clumps of cat hair to my cheeks and neck. Now that I am in my later thirties, the beard growth is more even but peppered with lots of colour, bits of blonde and (argh) grey mixed in with the brown.

I am also getting used to the scratchiness of a beard and catch myself absentmindedly biting at hairs around my mouth. I am also trying not to stare, or at least not to stare quite as obviously, at other men with impressively full beards. I am trying to suss out grooming techniques but if I am not careful I might come across as some kind of beard stalker.

Also to be avoided is any attempt to sculpt the beard into odd shapes. I am of a generation that grew up watching Timothy Claypole on television and that’s a look I am not trying to emulate! Instead I have been looking to the akg archive for inspiration and have chosen this selection of beardy beauties. I particularly love the Moroni Tailor and always make a beeline for it whenever I visit the National Gallery. Perhaps once my beard is a little fuller, I should invest in a doublet and hose…

I have boxes filled with old letters and I have never had the heart to throw any of them out, they are bundled by sender and they make me feel quite sentimental whenever I start reading through them. Letters were my lifeblood when I first moved abroad and phone calls were still expensive as was frequent travelling back and forth. There are many things I wouldn’t want back again but letter writing is something that merits reviving, I think. Just like digital photography, emails and text messages are too ephemeral and the tactility of a real photograph or a letter just doesn’t compare. Old acquaintances and friends are still alive in those long ago letter and postcards and the memories get revived every time I look at them. Can you say the same about those thousands of emails and texts?

I looked through the archive and found many moving images of letter writing throughout history – maybe somebody will get inspired and take out pen and paper!

My niece, like all children of that age, has an enormous amount of energy when it comes to playing and over those few days I was woken up with toys already in hand. Role-play is becoming important and she loves “going shopping” – my sister and I both loved pretend shopping as kids, probably because we were imitating our parents.

These days, I enjoy wandering around flea markets looking at antique toys and my niece already owns some 60s and 70s Playmobil that I have found on my travels. So many of the toys and games I see today have become so much part of a throwaway consumer society that it is doubtful any of them will survive the next year, let alone centuries like some of the items I have found in the archive.

We probably all still have an inner child who loves to play and most of us live it our in the presents we give to our kids, nieces and nephews and our friends’ kids. Just don’t hog the Lego!

7US-M2-1141-6 At a New York party, akg-images / George Mann

“Hello, stranger!”

Well, if this blog could speak that’s probably what it would have said this morning when I logged on to write a new entry. I apologise profusely to the blog for neglecting it. Since my last blog post in December, my time has been spent trying desperately to see as many friends as possible. The cinema and the gym are abandoned in favour of pre-Christmas dinner and drinks catching up with friends, many — ok, most — of whom I last saw in December the previous year.

Then, after that brief flurry of amicable activity and the Christmas and New Year break, January comes along. Short days and empty wallets usually mean staying at home in the evenings (or trying to get back into some sort of fitness routine) and I end up losing contact again with those friends to whom I had, only weeks before, sworn that “we must get together more often”.

I have now reached that age where most of my friends have started families and, as the number of children has grown, these friends have moved further and further out of the city to houses with gardens and good schools somewhere out on the commuter belt, so consequently it becomes even more difficult to meet up. As I have no intention either to move out of urban London or to buy a car (London’s streets are dangerous enough without me getting behind the wheel), friendships often reduce down to liking each other’s Facebook posts and the occasional birthday card in the post.

But it is precisely in January and February, when the nights are long and cold, that meeting up with friends is so essential for beating those winter blues. I was especially reminded of this whilst browsing some of the black and white images from the archive tagged with the keyword ‘friendship’. It’s not enough to follow your friends’ lives on Twitter, you have to be present in it. Plus, I have no children of my own, so I will have to stay in the memories (and the good books) of my friends’ kids, to make sure there’s someone to visit me when I am old and in a nursing home!