Baku - Stadt der schlagenden Winde ©Sebastian Burger
Baku – Stadt der schlagenden Winde © Sebastian Burger

#Kill Your Darlings is a collective of currently 20 young photographers. They all share the experience of having studied and graduated under professor Peter Bialobrzeski at Bremen University. We asked member Claudia A. Cruz about the group.

Why did you pick the name Kill Your Darlings?

The name relates to the way we work. We had to learn that sometimes it’s necessary to leave out pictures we love, say goodbye to them.

We thought it’s a perfect name because it mirrors this often quite painful method.

What makes Kill Your Darlings special?

In photography usually people never work together as a group. We only realized this after we had been doing this for a while.

©Pia Pollmans
©Pia Pollmans

What characterizes your way of working? 

From the beginning we worked totally independent from our professor – who was a main influence on us – or any other institutions. We realized all our projects in terms of funding and organisation completely on our own. All decisions were made in a grass-roots democratic way.

Are there any special topics your group deals with?

Our work is open to topics of any kind. Everybody is allowed to bring across his or her view of the world. We never wanted to be a group that works in a dogmatic way. As long as the photo is of good quality, it doesn’t matter if anyone pictures flowers or, say, underwear.

 What projects have you realized?

We designed an edition of printings and we frequently organise exhibitions of all our photographs. Also there is a book available with selected works. You can find more information on that on our homepage.

 #Kill Your Darlings 

copyright Photographers

Interview: Michael Mennig