SCREENings 2011 Jury : Sandra Markus, freelance art buying - be courageous and think as well photograph beyond your horizon!

Sandra Markus is a freelance art buyer and has been in the business for over ten years. She began in the classical style, as an intern at Scholz&Friends, without having a clue of what an art buyer actually does. However, she quickly found out that it is exactly what she wanted to do.

According to her views, a photograph should be authentic and intellectually stimulating, as well as fascinating at first glance. “It has to lure me in. It must make me say ‘Wow, it's magic’. It is becoming increasingly difficult nowadays, so much has been shown already and you rarely find new highlights, that is, something that is unseen, and never found its way to your desk before or is all over the media.”

Sandra Markus was born in 1974 in Niedermarsberg and initially studied education and logistics. “Thanks to a friend of mine who is an art director and a brainstorming session on my life (to that point) I ended up being an art buyer in 1999 (and in the ad business for what it’s worth).”

She relocated to Berlin and worked as an art buyer and even as a FFF producer for TBWA, DDB Berlin, Traffic at weigertpirouzwolf Hamburg and H2e Hoehne Habann Elser Ludwigsburg. Her list of clients includes big names such as Apollinaris, DHL, Lufthansa, Bunte, Nike, Coca-Cola, VW, Spiegel and Philip Morris.

On a general note, taking photographs has become increasingly about technology over the course of her career and that is something she does not appreciate too much. “Not only are most photographs being made digitally, but whole images can be created without any camera altogether (CGI). I think that many pictures are being destroyed or rendered meaningless during the post-production. Not much remains of the actual picture, a pity really.”

Her message to all photographers here on GoSee: “Be courageous and think as well photograph beyond your horizon.”