Welcome to my art project

ABOUT ME:

My name is Arnd Oetting,

I am a german born and in Vienna/Austria based photographer 
running my own studio for advertising photography since 1987,
mostly shooting campaigns for big companies.
Alongside my job I started teaching photography at the 
„Universtiy of  Applied Arts“ in Vienna in 1993.
Since 2008 I have been teaching at the „University of Applied Sciences“ in Sankt Poelten
and since 2018 I have my own youtube-channel
„Arnd Oetting‘s wunderbare Welt der Photography“.
Besides my job, the teaching and the youtube channel I play the trumpet
in my band „Funkhouser“ (nomen est omen),
and write the music, lyrics and the brass arrangements.

And then there is still this:

ABOUT THE PROJECT:
In1998 I bought a very average Barbie doll (Nr. 20666) in New York 
which I needed for an art project I was working on at that time.

Whilst waiting for my wife I was playing around with my camera 

and the Barbie doll in the streets of New York, trying out this and that. 
The most interesting shots resulted, when I made the Barbie doll
look pretty real at least in size and proportions within the settings.

This was good fun and killed the time, 
but there was still no special idea behind.
During the next months I played around with a possible concept
(there is obviously a lot of „playing around“ in my life which is great,
usually creating both, a lot of funny ideas and a lot of big touble 😉
and the final result of this process was and still is the project 
„Traveling with Barbie“.

Because my wife and I like traveling a lot, the idea was
to take Nr.20666 as the story‘s hero, who is traveling all over the world
meeting her friends and taking photos in front of the big sights 
like the typical souvenir photos the average tourist takes.
This may sound simple but it needs some preparations of course.
I have to search for the right Barbies in advance, for example, 
so that the „friends“ will fit the destinations.
Sometimes I have to change the outfits, 
if they want to go for a swim
or on a safari or whatever.
And luckily I bought more than one Barbie Nr. 20666,
because Mattell changes the Barbie models all the time 
so you can‘t get them any longer,
if I have to replace them from time to time.
The hair gets messy, the skin and the clothing gets dirty
or holey or the colour vanishes.

Within 25 years of working on this project styles, zeitgeist, fashion
and even Barbie dolls have changed a lot, which makes it difficult 
to keep close to the concept, but interesting to develop it 
at the same time. So now I am working on this selfie-thing for example.

The technical process is actually pretty easy:
position the dolls close to the camera and keep the right distance to the background
whilst using a wide angle lens (mostly 24mm focal length with 35mm cameras)
End of last century, of course, it was analog photography
so i had to work with 35 mm slr-cameras which was the smallest professional format.
Meanwhile i shoot with digital cameras, no matter which brand, 
usually with smaller sensors than 35mm to get a maximum depth of field .
So a lot of different models of Nikon, Canon, Sony, Olympus and Minolta,
even different iphones were used, usually in combination with a tripod. 
I rarely use additional light, but being a professional photographer
I definitely do know when and how to use it and so i do from time to time.

And that‘s about all, – the rest is a lot of traveling.
And great fun.
Hope you have fun too checking out my website
and have an eye on my instagram account and the blog too.

All the best and take care
Arnd