Malik, Max and Emme
Los Angeles-born, Berlin-based Matt Lambert just wants to make friends. He is an award winning film-maker and photographer working in narrative shorts, commercials, music videos, and documentary art pieces, but what cuts through all of those is his manner of getting under the skin of his subject.
Documentary photography has always had a (sometimes controversial) reputation as a practice built on proximity – think of Robert Capa’s famous “get closer” maxim. Lambert’s images may appear to be highly sexualised, but, rather, his approach is based on a more nuanced notion of intimacy. “Photography is a way to understand the nuances of humans, personalities and souls,” he says. “I consider all of the people I have worked with friends, even if it’s only for that moment. There is almost a maternal intimacy that happens when I am shooting.” He adds that, paradoxically, “I feel I can dig a bit deeper and get to know them a hell of a lot better than someone I have known as an acquaintance for years.”
His is a search for a depth of intimacy the like of which is usually only found between family and the closest of friends. The “best friend” approach results in an ambiguity: they leave viewers wanting to see more and at the same time wanting to look away for fear of becoming a voyeur.
Many of his subjects are young men on the cusp of adulthood, the majority of whom have never stood for a camera before: boys he met online, male escorts from around Europe, and fresh-faced models, each interaction creating its own story and its own intimacy.
All photographs by Matt Lambert
To see the full portfolio, pick up a copy of Sleek Magazine 40 “Man & Boy”
www.dielamb.com
“Hanno is a 16-year-old kid from the north of Germany who was walking through Alexanderplatz on a trip with his mother when someone from IZAIO Models scouted him. I only really like shooting models if they are new faces, because I love that moment when they don’t really understand their physical presence and the effect it can have. “This particular image was taken at the end of the shoot. I don’t want people to pose and I cast according to personality, so I’m always trying to find that thing about them that I was interested by in the first place. I try not to take the ‘photographer’ role ever. I treat people as friends because I want that thing that they give to their friends, which is their selves – that thing they wouldn’t normally give to a photographer. Models, on the other hand, can be boring because they fall into this routine and they know what looks are good for them, almost relying on a rhythm. There’s no discovery in that for me.”
Jannis and Max
“This was another image from ‘Heile Gänsje’, and was shot in Minibar on Gräfestraße in Berlin. It’s my boyfriend Jannis on the left, and he has been in almost every single film I have done, and is a producer on a lot of my films now and I guess was my muse, someone I trust and who understands me. Jannis puts his ego to one side and throws himself entirely into the project. To be honest, there’s probably a masochist thing lying under this all too.”
Luis and Paul
“This was the graveyard in Schöneberg where Marlene Dietrich is buried, and the scene that we were shooting for the film was all about innocence and the quality of youth before it’s lost. I cast these two because they embodied that, and I didn’t really have to get them to do a lot, but just let them be boys. It was a very real moment: I wanted to shoot in front of the angel, but outside of that there wasn’t a whole lot of direction going on, they just knew who they wanted to embody.”
German
“He’s a kid from Moscow, a young fashion designer who’s doing stuff that is quite subversive in Russia. He is quite a romantic individual and has a poetic mind, and I was trying to document that and bring out the essence of the dreamer he is. This was shot on the day after we were hanging out, just walking around the city.”
Paul.
“A lot of these portraits, I think, are a bit love lost.”
Kevin
“My boyfriend and I were spending some weekends at my dad’s house an hour north of LA. We were really bored, there is literally nothing around there. This guy was around and we hung out on the beach and smoked a bowl – it totally felt like high school. I pulled out my camera and took some photos on the beach that night. I don’t know how it came up, but it turns out he is quite a big cammodel. It was weird timing because he is doing live sex shows online and it was the same time that I was beginning to look at a project on sexuality in the digital age – weird because it was the last person that you would expect to be doing that, the most innocent seeming kid ever. He was 21, 22 or something like that. We hung out as friends every weekend, and Jannis had bought this shirt at the Salvation Army store, and we did a little shoot together where we talked about his life as a cam-model. He is a really special guy.”
Arti and Nikolay
“I shot this in Moscow with these kids who took me round the city. They are outwardly gay kids in Russia, and they were jumping on each other and pissing around the whole time. For this shoot I was uncomfortable for sure, especially
because what is happening in Russia right now. They seemed to not care, but I wasn’t sure if they actually understood the severity of what is happening because of the censorship. I was on edge the entire time.”