This boots are made for walking, and that is what they do - when they are exploring. They have been from California to Ostpreussen, from Sweden to Sicily, baptized in the Mediterranean and Baltic See as well as in the Colorado River.
Walking is the best way to explore anything, as it gets you everywhere. You get in contact with people quite easily. A stranger walking with a camera in a non-tourist area has to attract attention - and usually has to be adressed in some way.
walking brings you into the backyards of St. Petersburg where kids are playing in a car wreck, into the Mojave Desert for picking up rusty vintage beer cans, or into a deep forest in Georgia with the amazing sight of decaying cars.
By the way, these boots are proudly made in the USA by the Red Wing Shoe Company Inc. in Red Wing, MN
I am Christian Schmoeger, a photographer based in Southern Germany - to be precisly in Lower Franconia, a district in Northern Bavaria.
I am a professional architect - about 4 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall I moved to Dresden to study architecture at the Technical University of Dresden.
During that time i started exploring. The East was still wild with an abundance of collapsing industries and industrial areas as well as eroding residential areas and neighbourhoods.
As my university had a lot of ties to the former USSR, the excursions expanded to the post communist Russia, Belarus and the Baltic States.
A term paper in urban planning took me to Detroit in the winter of 1998. The huge Hudson warehouse was still standig, the erosion of downtown was at his heights. I walked and explored Detroit for two weeks, obviously being the only tourist in downtown - and it was the best exploration ever. The resemblance to the eroding East was amazing.
I spent my important 18th birthday in Normal, IL with my friend Steve and his family - but didn't return to the US till the exploration of Detroit in 1998.
And again, it took me 21 years to come back.
In 2019 - just in time before the pandemic - I started exploring the Southern States of the US with my camera, starting in Alabama and Georgia. And the first Journey after the pandemic in 2022 brought me to Oklahoma, following the Route 66 to the Californian border. I had quite some time to explore the Mother Road - and beyond.
And i hope to be back soon for the Dakotas, Montana, Minnesota and Idaho.
I grew up in Wuerzburg, which had a large American military community. Ten Thousand American soldiers and their families called Wuerzburg home from 1945 to 2006. They were members of the 1st Infantry Division (The Big Red one) and the 3rd Infantry Division (Rock of the Marne).
Back in the days, the Americans mingled with the German population. American soldiers and there families were a common sight in downtown Wuerzburg.
During second and third grade in elementary school, i sat next to Sandra, a beautiful American girl in a German school. And when I was sixteen, Steve from Illionois lived with us, an american exchange student.
The German-American Volksfest in the Leighton Barracks was a Highlite every year. I remember late night bus rides with young American soldiers to some discotheques, where we sometimes were discussing the war - and always agreed, that Germany would have won against the USSR - without the USA entering into the war.
My family lived for years next to a military housing complex, and i did enjoy the obligatory car wash on saturdays with AFN Wuerzburg at max volume. And did those huge cars shine in the sun...
Enough reasons for my interest in the USA
And the classic american cars - more than any other cars they represent a bygone time - with a prospering and growing industry, offering jobs to everyone. The change of model every year showed all the Zeitgeist there was.
It is a time, i guess a lot of us want to have back, living in such uncertain times like these in the summer of 2022.
So those cars are the remnants of those golden days - and that is, why want to picture them, as they are dissapearing...
I am using two fine cameras, one is the mirrorless Canon R5 - and the other one is a rangefinder camera made in Germany - the Leica M 10.
The Leica is a solid brick, has small but superb lenses... and is the best choice when strolling through a quiet, deserted texan smalltown in the summerheat - or strolling through the brushes of a wide and abandoned car graveyard.
A lot of my pictures are made with my Leica - but the Canon R5 is also doing a great job.
So lean back and just enjoy my way of picturing America. These pictures have been earned hard - sweat has been paid a lot for them, blood for quite some... and tears?
Not one drop!
And if you like some of them and want to hold them, nail them on your wall - feel free to contact me. Fine art prints, signed and limited are available, framed with the best material there is - Halbe frames... or just plain prints.
Of course they can be printed on everything there is, from canvas to coated (or pure) aluminium and plexiglass.
I don't make a living with that pictures, so they are affordable! and it is a pleasure for me to know, that some of them might find a new home.
