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It all depends on the perspective.
And a feeling for the right moment.
Almost anyone can press the shutter release, and the hurdles for a technically clean recording have steadily decreased since the plate cameras of the first photo reporters around 1900.
Nevertheless, there are great photographers who take impressive pictures, some of which have become icons and will be remembered by an entire nation.
What distinguishes them from the millions and millions of occasional snappers is their eye for perspective and a feeling for the right moment.
Sven Simon, whose real name was Axel Springer junior, had both.
Born on February 7, 1941 in Hamburg as the second child and first son of the later publisher Axel Springer (whose company has also published WELT since 1953), 2021 will mark his 80th birthday.
But Sven Simon passed away at the beginning of 1980 at the age of 39.
In addition to the memories of his family, there are still thousands of impressive photos of him.
They show that Sven Simon was able to capture moments and personalities on film like few other photographers of his time.
Everyone, really every reasonably attentive German today knows recordings by Sven Simon.
The cover of the illustrated book shows Willy Brandt reading a volume by the Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon
Source: Edition Braus
His son Axel Sven Springer and Lars-Broder Keil, the head of the corporate archive of Axel Springer SE, have published an illustrated book with selected pictures from the stock of the still active photo agency Sven Simon (“The special picture. Work and life of the photographer Sven Simon Edition Braus. 144 p., 20 euros).
There are rediscoveries such as very private photos of Romy Schneider with her little son David, the portraits of Cuba's ruler Fidel Castro or photos from Israel 1967 to 1973. But of course the famous icons are also among them.
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For example, how Uwe Seeler was bent off the pitch in 1966 after the “Wembley goal” and the lost final at the World Cup in London.
About how Willy Brandt falls on his knees in front of the memorial for the ghetto uprising in Warsaw in 1970 and a whole pack of photographers and cameramen take pictures of him.
Sven Simon, however, stands on the other side (with significantly fewer colleagues) and records the contrast between the large, spontaneous gesture according to Brandt and the inevitable presence of reporters in a media democracy (the Federal Republic, not the People's Republic of Poland at the time).
Oskar Kokoschka and Konrad Adenauer toast
Source: SvenSimon
Springer junior, who uses the pseudonym “Sven Simon” during his internship, is always looking for a different perspective.
This is shown well by his portraits of the first five Federal Chancellors, all of which he repeats, sometimes even often photographs.
Perhaps his real name, that is, the importance of his father as a publisher, will help him.
But even if that had been the case, it in no way diminishes the excellent quality of many of his recordings.
For example the series that shows the painter Oskar Kokoschka portraying the founding chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1966.
The 90-year-old takes three weeks to model the 80-year-old Expressionist.
Sven Simon is there with the camera in Cadenabbia on Lake Como.
Good portraits need closeness and calm.
This is what Sven Simon's recordings of Adenauer's successor Ludwig Erhard radiate.
In 1965 the photographer was allowed to take pictures in the glass chancellor's bungalow in the park behind the Palais Schaumburg in Bonn on the Rhine, which had recently been inaugurated;
he succeeds in taking a backlit picture of Erhard, who was just as successful as Minister of Economics and unsuccessful as Prime Minister.
When the second Federal Chancellor resigned on November 30, 1966 and left his official residence, the Palais Schaumburg, Sven Simon pressed the shutter button a few meters behind him: the classic motif for a resigning politician.
Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger also let Sven Simon get up close and personal
Source: SvenSimon
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Erhard's successor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, also lets Simon get close to him - although it is always clear that Springer junior sees himself as a photojournalist, never as a court reporter.
The third Chancellor in front of a mirror while adjusting the tie on the occasion of a TV address with a mischievous smile: Only a recognized and independent reporter can do that.
Somebody like that can then also implement stagings that sound almost unbelievable if they weren't proven by photos: when Kiesinger, physically a giant, welcomes his successor Willy Brandt in the Chancellor's office in 1969 (as is natural for a retiring top politician in a democracy) clear: a double portrait with the SPD chairman who is a whole head smaller must inevitably be to the detriment of the fourth Chancellor.
Sven Simon manages to get his protagonists to make an unusual gesture: Brandt stands on a box of materials and Kiesinger accepts it so that the outgoing and the new chancellor appear at eye level.
Sven Simon's photo of Willy Brandt's kneeling in Warsaw in 1970
Source: SVEN SIMON
Springer junior succeeds in another famous and often seen Brandt portrait in 1970 in Erfurt: The Federal Chancellor looks out of the window of the hotel “Erfurter Hof” when a West German head of government visits the GDR for the first time.
You can see how the office has aged him in just one year and how he is suffering from the division of Germany.
Brandt certainly has that in common with Sven Simon (and Axel Springer).
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The photographer of Helmut Schmidt takes the most personal photos of a Federal Chancellor.
There is a simple reason for this - Loki, the politician's wife, was Axel junior's teacher in Hamburg for a while.
As early as 1966, Schmidt has only just returned to Bonn from Hamburg city politics, he accompanies the family on a private trip to the Soviet Union.
The result is photos of a thoughtful man who obviously strives for something higher.
The photographer's object photographed back: Helmut Schmidt 1966 in Moscow
Source: SvenSimon
For other politicians, a recording like the one Sven Simon made of Helmut Schmidt in 1973 would have been embarrassing: In a casual look, with a pipe in his mouth, the Federal Minister of Finance and clearly the second man in the Federal Government after Brandt reads a commentary on the Basic Law.
Sven Simon managed to make this motif look worthy with Schmidt.
His recordings of Loki and Helmut Schmidt show a great deal of sympathy and are nonetheless not curious.
Only if a reporter manages this balancing act can he take regular recordings that become part of contemporary history.
Sven Simon is undoubtedly one of the great photographers of the Federal Republic of Germany, alongside legends of the Bonn Republic such as the older Jupp Darchinger and the six weeks younger Konrad R. Müller.
What they have in common, regardless of the stylistic differences, is the feeling for the special perspective and the right moment.
Axel Sven Springer / Lars-Broder Keil (eds.): “The special picture. Work and life of the photographer Sven Simon "(Edition Braus. 144 p., 20 euros)
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