Blau Weiß Gold

Independent photography and exhibition project about my view of Munich.

Blau Weiß Gold (Blue White Gold) is a series of photographs taken over several years and presented in two exhibitions funded by the Munich Cultural Department and curated by Lorenz Seibl.

2011 Blue White Gold - Colour Photographs from Munich

2016 Blue White Gold - Anarchy Munich Style

The work is about my subjective perception of Munich and the city's idiosyncrasies. It is about nightlife, culture, freedom, Munich culinary, and urban observations. Therefore, the location chosen for the exhibition is the Vereinsheim in Occamstraße, in the heart of Schwabing, which has been a well-known venue for cultural events of all kinds for decades.

Aesthetically, the photos play with the contrast between increasingly modern technology and at the same time more and more "older" looking results. Thus, from the very beginning, smartphone apps were used, deliberately bypassing the classic professional photographic process. 

This resulted in numerous photo series with several hundred photos, each with its own unique aesthetic. The interesting thing for me was to realise that the people around me reacted very differently to my smartphone and the less professional-looking app than if I had a larger camera with me. This resulted in shots that were less sharp and precise than I was used to, but that showed moments that would have been hard to capture any other way and at the same time seemed particularly subjective. 
It is not without reason that this technique has now also found its way into international reporting when it comes to documenting certain impressions where conventional photojournalism reaches its limits. 

This theme was also taken up at the openings, where the digital photos were exposed on slides and presented as a slide show with an antique projector from the 1950s. In this way, old and new technologies merge and create an aesthetic of the current zeitgeist from the respective aesthetics, which I wanted to express with this project.

A comment on the first Blue White Gold exhibition in 2011:

"Julian Schulz, a student of photo design at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich, has a remarkable view of things in everyday life. On the one hand, it often happens that you yourself are still thinking that you absolutely want to document the scene photographically right now when Schulz has long since captured it. The other situation, typical for Julian Schulz, is the following: you experience pleasant encounters, scenes, conversations. And only afterwards do you realise that Schulz has also captured them photographically. Many of Julian Schulz's photos were taken in the evening or at night, many are finds from Munich's nightlife between Schwabing, Neuhausen, Hauptbahnhof and Sendling. What could be more natural than to return these photographs to Munich's nightlife? Munich's "Vereinsheim" in Occamstraße, which has provided a venue for small and large-scale art for half a century, will make its walls available as an exhibition space for Schulz's work between 3 and 15 June 2011." 

Interview about the 2016 Blau Weiß Gold exhibition in Munich City Magazine Mucbook.