Express your ideas: "Time travel"

A darkly dressed young man in the style of the 1920s sits on a chair and smokes.

Course 224453 Visual Language and Photodesign
Summer semester 2025

Lecturers:
Prof. Gabriele Kille, Thomas Weccard, Kristof Lange, Jörg Rohrbacher

In this course, students are first taught the necessary basic knowledge of camera and lighting technology, shooting and image processing. Building on this, the photo shoot is created at the end, in which the individual components then flow together.

In "Express your ideas", the students themselves are at the centre of the task. Within a team of four, they are asked to create a picture of themselves in a freely selectable common context. Once the concept is agreed and realisable, the subtleties of each individual shot are then worked out. This involves atmosphere, lighting mood, but also props, styling, outfits and make-up.

A young woman dressed in the style of the 60s is sitting on the floor leaning against an old radio and holding a teacup and saucer in her hands.

Concept and technology

For "Express your ideas", we have created a visual journey through time that shows defining moments of pop culture in four stylised eras. The focus is not only on fashion trends, but also on cultural forms of expression, scene aesthetics and iconic symbols - in other words, what shapes youth culture and media images to this day.

Each scene picks up on an era with a strong recognition value:
The 20s as a visual reference to series such as Peaky Blinders, the early 60s in the look of conservative post-war idyll with teacups, pastels and tube radios, the 80s as an homage to West Coast rap, street culture and groups such as N.W.A., with skateboards, gold chains and spray cans. The final section is a 2000s scene that fuses gaming, retro tech and pop stars on tube monitors.

A young man dressed in 80s style is sitting on the floor. He is wearing sunglasses and a heavy gold chain.

We didn't want to simply imitate the styles, but rather reinterpret them with a wink, personal details and small breaks that make you think. The colour schemes are deliberately bold in order to emphasise not only the mood of the times, but also the media staging. Our journey through time is a playful exploration of pop culture, identity and memory. A visual collage between nostalgia and a view of the present.

For the visual realisation of the four eras, we deliberately combined different technical means to credibly depict the atmosphere, aesthetics and sense of time. The photos were taken with a Canon EOS R5 and a 24-105 mm zoom lens, which enabled us to depict all the protogonists in the same way, regardless of how they were placed on the photo colours. Supported by photo flashes, we were able to work specifically with light accents.

A young woman is sitting in front of an old tube television. There are two other TV sets next to her.

A central design element was the deliberate use of colour surfaces: pink, black, red and grey, which we used as background colours to create a clear, stylised space for each time period depicted. The colours served not only as a backdrop, but also to emotionally charge the scenes and differentiate the eras. Another central element was the integration of tube televisions, which were fed with live images via Raspberry Pis and RCA cables. This enabled us to reflect the 2000s scene with its retro-tech aesthetic. A Gamecube and two JVC camcorders were specifically used as props to visually anchor the respective media technology of the time.

Student team:
Nia Neunberger, Julian Dimitriadis, Julia Starnecker, Nya Ehrchen

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