Vice Style

Walter Pfeiffer has been documenting his obsessions - young, beautiful, muscular boys - since the 1970s. While his pictures have been influential on many photographers, from Ryan McGinley to Jack Pierson, and for someone who has shot for magazines like i-D, Butt, and Vogue over the last ten years, Walter is surprisingly humble. His honesty comes across in the photographs, and that, along with his dislike of shooting professional models, is what keeps the pictures from seeming voyeuristic. There is something about being honest about your obsessions, that stops them from being sordid. After all, Walter is simply into beauty.

Vice: How is everything coming along with the exhibition?
Walter Pfeiffer: Oh fine, fine. I don't always want to show the same pictures, otherwise it's boring, so most of the exhibition is new work from the last three or four years. It is still lifes and landscapes, and some boys.

This is the next exhibition in a long line of shows you have been dong over the past ten years, but prior to that you had a break from photography. Why?
It was from 1986 to the late 90s. I stopped after an exhibition I held at a museum in the Kunsthalle in Basel, Switzerland. That was such a huge thing to do, we had to find so many people to shoot for the exhibition, and there were so many people around me, that afterwards I just thought, "I want to be on my own, draw, and improve my painting." Maybe that is something that will happen again in the future, but at the moment I am still doing photography, for as long as I can. It is always in the background for me, that if it all goes wrong I can start painting again.

But photography still excites you?
Yes, of course. I love it. In a way it is more the process of finding the boys, and the directing of them that I really enjoy. It is not actually about improving my photography that keeps me interested, it is more the process. I am technically the same as when I started.

So it's the casting process that you enjoy?
Yes, definitely. The other week I went up into the Alps, and I took somebody with me that I had seen a few times and had spoken to about taking some pictures. It was really nice to have a boy to take up there and photograph, that wasn't a professional model. He had never done it before either. It is nice because he was kind of shy at first, but you develop with them, and they gradually get better and better to work with.

Your work seems very much about fun, and has a really relaxed attitude.
The most fun and excitement is when I have a really beautiful person before me, and he makes me think I could fall in love immediately. It does take a lot to get some of the boys to feel relaxed though, you have to work with them over a period of time.

Do you always feel as relaxed as the boys in the pictures seem?
Yes, it is so much fun for me to do this. It is different when I am shooting professionally for a magazine - I am really very tense - but when I do it with new people, by myself, it is something completely different; it is so enjoyable.

The guys in your pictures always have a certain look, a certain similarity between them. How would you describe it?
Mostly, I love people who have a strong erotic impact on me. I can't describe it exactly, but a kind of sensual feeling. That's the most I am looking for. You don't find it all the time, you have to wait. If I complain, "Oh, I can't find anyone..." I ask around, but my friends mostly bring me the wrong people. All the great boys I have met have been by accident, I have just come across them. It has to be that way, you can't push it.

How do you find them?
Mostly from friends of friends, or maybe I see somebody and I find ways to get at them. Behind corners waiting sometimes! Sometimes it doesn’t work and sometimes it works when it's too late; when I have to wait too long and by the time I get it, I don’t want it anymore.

Are they always open to being photographed?
No! There are stupid ones you have to get on your knees for, but I'm not interested. I went up into the mountains a couple of weeks ago and I made some remarkable photographs. Afterwards I said, "We must do some more pictures, that was fantastic", and the boy said that he wasn’t interested. What can you do? You can fight, but sometimes you don’t have the nerves anymore. I don’t want to chase them if they don’t want to do it. It ends up with me getting more distraught and them just saying no, it's a vicious circle. I feel like a mouse in a treadmill.

Do you feel like it has got more difficult recently, now that young people are more aware of being photographed?
Yes, that is true. When I first started it was so much easier. Now everyone wants to be a model. When I was in Berlin recently I would have boys brought to me, but some of them are stupid and think they are great. Then again, I am so surprised when I meet really great people who don’t care about me or who I am, they just want to make the pictures. There are some people, always the wrong ones, who want to be photographed like crazy, but the real ones you have to fight for.

Your models are always quite young. Do you think you will shoot older guys, as you get older?
No (laughs). You know, I tell you, I will do it until it doesn’t work anymore, but I don't want to shoot older guys really. I got a letter from someone my age recently, he said he loved my work and he was still looking good and asked if I would like to work with him. I wrote and said, "Thank you very much and blah blah blah, but no." I can't do it. I mean, I could do it, but then it would seem like work. I'm about the beauty of youth. I can't describe it, it's like love in a way.

So you were saying earlier that there is a possibility you may go back to drawing at some point. Do you think that would happen if you stopped being able to work with the right boys?
Yeah, yeah, I know it. I still do some drawing but I find that you can't really do both photography and drawing at the same time. Right now I am happiest taking photographs, but someday it will be the right time to start drawing again. Maybe when I am fed up with everything.

Walter's new photography exhibition goes on show at Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zurich, from 25 September.

 
WILLIAM OLIVER