It's one of those frosty days in Berlin - and we're sitting in the sunny corner of a café and talking about the most interesting fridges that Sandra has photographed so far. There was this fridge in London with a towel in it. A gluten-free fridge in France. Older ladies' fridges stuffed with Tupperware. A monk's fridge full of vegetables wrapped in plastic. Canned vegetables and cold chips for breakfast in Turkey. Our colleague Christiane's fridge (on the cover)...
You get an idea of the insights a refrigerator can provide into certain lifestyles, eating habits, social class, gender, national differences. And Sandra admits that the project, which began as a final project at photography school, has now become an addiction on the one hand and developed into a comprehensive sociological study on the other. At the beginning there were doubts: "Perhaps someone has taken pictures of refrigerators before me, nothing is new in this world, but my teacher said - OK, then just do it better!"
Sandra is a gifted product photographer with a conceptual approach. “Show me your fridge” juxtaposes a portrait of the fridge and a portrait of the person in the home environment. She uses flash to create the same lighting situation for all the fridges in the series, cropping the edges to reflect the size of the fridge itself. “One day I would like to make a book out of the series.”
She started off with a collection of German fridges and then, through travelling, she added fridges from London, Paris, Turkey and South Africa. When asked about South Africa, it turns out that part of Sandra's family lives in Pretoria and that while she was in Cape Town, she enjoyed a certain small-town feel, despite the size of the city.
A refreshing fact from Sandra's CV: She had never taken photographs before in her life when her mother advised her to choose photography as a career and she bought her first camera for photography school. She is currently working towards becoming a freelance visual concept and product photographer, but at the same time would like to pursue her own ideas. When asked "What is the secret to good product photography?" she answers amusedly: "It has to look good."
