In the next 9 months, I will be spending a significant amount of time preparing my work for different exhibitions. 2026 will also be the year of my first solo show in a gallery, but more on that in a different letter.

First I want to invite everyone to an opening in Munich next week.

My work will be installed for ONE NIGHT ONLY, so make sure to be there on:
Friday, 30th of January
18.30-23:00
The Cloud Studio C/O ZIRKA STUDIO
Dachauer Str. 110 C, 80636 Munich

The whole weekend is dedicated to topics surrounding womanhood: stories about romantic love, motherhood and violence and features photographic works and performances by Malin Victoria Kraus, Marlene Mauer, Natalie Stanczak & Melinka Karrer, Jana Margarete Schuler, Anna Pentzlin and me!

ABOUT VIDEOTAPE

I am also very excited for this evening, because Videotape has never been printed and shown before, so I am very curious to see how it resonates with an audience. I copied a little something from our press materials about my work:

“In her photographic work, Annika Weertz documents her own romantic relationship over seven years. Raw and without staged distance, she follows the emotional chronology of the relationship, painting an intimate portrait of closeness, desire and dependence – both physical and emotional. By consistently focusing her gaze on her partner and herself, Weertz reveals the dynamics between observation, control and devotion. In its radical subjectivity, the work questions common notions of romance and intimacy and illuminates how female perspectives are transmitted, internalised and deconstructed in romantic and pictorial relationships.”

Detailed schedule in German

VERNISSAGE FORMAT 1
30. Januar 2026 , ab 18.30 Uhr
Annika Weertz & Malin Victoria Kraus zu romantischer Liebe

VERNISSAGE FORMAT 2
31. Januar 2026, ab 18.30 Uhr
Marlene Mauer, Natalie Stanczak & Melinka Karrer zu Gewalt

VERNISSAGE FORMAT 3
01. Februar 2026, Jana Margarete Schuler & Anna Pentzlin zu Mutterschaft

The exhibition has been curated and organised by Malin Victoria Kraus & Mona Shatry. Graphic Design by Studio HUMAN.

Looking forward to seeing friendly and familiar faces and have a little chat with everyone.

Til soon,

Annika

COME AS YOU ARE

My Substack post from February about Come As You Are got me a wonderful feature in the International Women’s Day edition of TAZ!

Fast forward to the end of June, we are shooting a fashion editorial for ZEITMagazin in my favourite pub in Germany: Pit’s Pinte in Gießen.
Definitely one big highlight of 2025!

PORTRAITURE

I took a lot of portraits, some within personal projects, some as commissioned work for Die Zeit, Zeit Campus, Missy Magazine and The Washington Post. I shot a few artist portraits and did my first pregnancy shoot, which was a very special experience as well.

FASHION WORK

A big chapter of 2025 was collaborating with fashion designer and textile artist Jasmin Wottke for her label J.A.I.W: we co-produced a fashion story and a lookbook and I shot my first short film in August:

PERSONAL WORK

Besides client a work, I dedicated a lot of my time to my personal project I Want This House to Be Haunted in which I trace the grief I experienced in my childhood home: the place I grew up in, had to leave because of my parent’s divorce and later inherited after my father’s sudden death. For this, I am working on my first proper solo show and book for 2026. I am really excited to delve into this further next year and I will surely keep you updated here.

SAVE THE DATE

My first stop in January will be in Munich on the 30th of January as part of a group exhibition where I show Videotape for the first time. I hope to see some familiar faces there.

SEE YOU

Thanks to everyone who worked with me behind or in front of the camera, I am very excited and curious about 2026.

See you all then.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.

Annika

Since February, artist & fashion designer Jasmin Wottke and I have been conceptualising a story in which fashion plays an important role in creating captivating images without being the sole focus. I wanted the clothes to be interwoven in a story line in which they can act as vehicle for emotions.

This resulted in There’s No Place Like Home: a photo and video story featuring a Woman character in a hotel room being haunted by a phantom.

The story draws inspiration from Dario Argento’s strong visual language and the Wizard of Oz and therefore heavily relies on colour and clothes to convey tension and the emotional rollercoaster our Woman character experiences.

The Inspiration

For me, this project is a very personal project, despite having so many more collaborators than usual. Since I was a child, I was intrigued by spooky subjects: I have always enjoyed being frightened by books or films. Since I can remember, I have been seeking a GOOD thrilling story. Diving into Dario Argento’s work in the last four years and looking at how he and his DOPs have created outstanding frames by their use of Technicolor, compositions, fashion and production design have had a big impact on me. I rarely get to create a project like this for a client (as of yet).
Please do consider it, it was a lot of fun.

Through this project, I noticed I can write a storyboard, direct a team, make quick decisions follow the plan, even when time, space and film stock is limited.

Thank you all for reading and thanks to everyone involved in making this happen. It has been a dream for a long time and now it is reality.

See you in Paris!

Until next time,

Annika

CREDITS
Laura Schuller @lauraschuller with @iconic_mgmt

Rosa Schwanitz @sailorpopolosa with @izaoi.commercial

Story & Photography & DOP & Edit: Annika Weertz @annikaweertz

Production: Jasmin Wottke @j.a.i.w & Annika Weertz

Fashion: J.A.I.W @j.a.i.w

Location & Set Design: Nora Rida @norarida

Score & Title Design & Ruby Slippers: Stephan Gräfe @stephan.graefe

Styling: Jasmin Wottke @j.a.i.w & Lana Junkert @lanajunkert

Hair: Jana Von Oheimb-Rosta @jana.vonoheimbrosta

Make Up: Sarah Gmür @sarahgmuer.makeup

Light & Photo Assistant: Paul Max Fischer @paulmaxfischer

Fashion Assistant: Jonas Neubert @jxnvznbt

For those interested:
We shot this project within 5 hours and used 5 rolls of Kodak Ektar film. The video was entirely shot on Super 8 using 1.5 rolls of Kodak Vision 200T. 

When I took pictures of Milan and his friends in 2022 for the first time, I wanted the photographs to be published in Zeit Magazin (of course — a lot of photographers want that). As luck would have it, shortly after scanning my negatives, Zeit Magazin published their own version of adolescent fashion by portraying teenagers on the streets of Berlin. For me that meant, I had to wait a little while for another try.

After regularly documenting the group in their favorite surroundings in Gießen for two years, I thought it would be a nice idea to take this whole thing to another level by collaborating with a magazine and throw a stylist’s ideas into the mix, see how the kids’ sense of self and attitude collide with the vision of a seasoned stylist.

After pitching to two other magazines (I know, not a lot) who didn’t want to do it, Milena Carstens from Zeit Magazin said “YES!” and on a very very very hot day in June, we all met at Pit’s Pinte to shoot an editorial featuring autumn and winter fashion.

I am very proud and grateful how everything came together, because not only did Milan, Lola, Yusuf, Laura, Zoe and Luna handle their first editorial very professionally (winter coats in 35 degrees), shooting in the pub I called a second home during my studies was a dream come true. A huge thank you for Leo and Doro who run the pub and turned it into the nicest places to hang out at and opened the doors for us.

I want to celebrate this, because it’s one of those things, where I waited a little longer and stuck to my vision and it came together beautifully! I could not be happier. Thanks again to Milena Carstens and Klaus Stockhausen for making one of my dreams come true and working with me on this.

That is it for today. I hope you enjoyed a small glimpse behind the scenes and think of me for your future projects.

Til next,

Annika

In the meantime, I wanted to give a small look behind the scenes. I don’t often have the chance to photograph models in the middle of hair and makeup, but on two of the projects I managed to capture a few portraits.

The work of hair & make up artists is essential to make the concept come to live. I love watching them do their work.

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This month, I finally collaborated with fashion designer Jasmin Wottke for her label J.A.I.W. Across those two projects, I had the pleasure of working with Rosa Schwanitz (IZAIO Management).

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Another highlight was a personal collaboration with Laura Schuller. We first met in 2019 on one of my earliest commercial assignments, and I have admired her ever since. Back then I was shooting moving images, but I also took a few behind-the-scenes photographs that remain among my favorites.

That’s it for now. I’ll be sharing more of this work soon, but for the moment I hope you enjoy this small preview.

As summer comes to a close, I’m looking forward to autumn and the projects ahead. I’m open to new projects, so if you have something in mind for autumn, I’d be glad to hear from you.

— Annika

A little classic to listen to:

In 2024, I started a portrait series, only for the sake of enjoying the whole process. Taking these images does not take long, but it is a funny experience because I tell people to just open their mouths. I give them space to experiment and offer me something that they think might be interesting.

Last year, I would keep a roll of Ilford FP4 in my Nikon F4 and have it ready whenever someone visited me. The fun lies in the experiment, seeing the scans and using a whole face to compose an image. It is a project I like to come back to doing when I just want to enjoy myself taking photographs. It is a reminder that not everything you take photos of has to follow a certain story or purpose for it to be worthy of consideration.

I will continue working on this for a while and collect a lot of faces. If you have the chance to visit me without a lot of hassle and want to participate, please let me know. I will take everyone, just don’t bring your vanity.

Have a good week,

Annika

Last week I thought that sharing photographs on here, like I do over on instagram, is redundant and boring. But I think not all posts need to be full of information and my opinion.

So, I decided to share these images with you that I took over the weekend for fashion designer Jasmin Wottke. Like me, she has a thing for slugs. And in collaboration with glass studio Kitsch Kiosk, she made these beautiful glass slugs.

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I’ve been wanting to take these for a while and had planned to shop for flowers (best props) on Wednesday as a reward for finishing an article for a technical publication. But I was busy with doing preparations for another shooting happening this week, so I spend the whole weekend in my studio, walking back and forth between my set-up back and my desk. I also finally bought a tether cable to fully immerse myself into the studio experience, but I did not manage to stick with it yet. I like to be able to be very close to my camera (yes, as close as you can get without your eyes getting hurt).

When I visited Jasmin in her studio after Easter, I brought the slugs home with me and made them come to life in my studio. It is so much fun to see how this turned out, because I actually noticed again: less is more.

I hope you enjoyed looking at these photographs and have a beautiful Monday first week of March !

-Annika

Come As You Are

After I published my newsletter about portraying youth in February, I got a call for the project to be published in print. It received a lot of space in the weekend edition of the German newspaper taz: a special edition for international women’s day. Thank you Mathias Königschulte for making it happen. Everyone involved in the project was super excited.

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I was happy about it for one particular reason: the portraits were just printed without a big accompanying story or captions — just my photographs next to articles about becoming a woman that had nothing specifically to do with my protagonists. What I really liked about that is that the photographs were able to be published on how I intended them to be shown: A photograph with a name under it. There is no big context — it is just a group of teenagers who I have grown very fond of over the years for their way of expressing themselves through their clothing and their joy in creating together with me. I have tried to get them published before by adding what they thought about Europe, so framing the whole story as something about first voters, neglecting the reason why I started the project in the first place. I mean it is fine to do it. We all want to get our work out there somehow. But I actually disliked the idea from the get-go and when I had collected all their quotes, spent a whole day on a pdf to send out and then never got a reply, I was relieved. Because I hated it.

Why I Dislike The Long Captions

I am glad that the story was never published in this context. Because I do not want to add something to it that wasn’t actually there in the first place. Of course we talk about politics sometimes, but these pictures are primarily about them and their view of themselves and call me crazy, but to me, that should be enough. If you want to know something about them, just look at the pictures, with portraits it’s usually all there. They are the project. We take photographs because we like looking at things. If I have to read a whole paragraph to understand what is happening in an image, then I am out of here — yes, there are exceptions in journalism.

The 2025 Portraits

All of the photographs published in taz were taken in 2023 and while I was waiting for the confirmation whether the story will actually being printed, I drove to Gießen to take another round of portraits: the first photo session with them in over a year. I also photographed Luna for the first time and I am so happy about it. If you want a reason for that — again, just look at the pictures.

It was good to have over a year between those sessions, because I can really see now how they are growing up and soon, I will not be able to call them kids anymore (I know I sound like an old parent). But until that day comes, I will take those pictures and share them with you and who knows, publish a book? Exhibit?

Thanks for catching up with me this time. I know I have shared more personal projects on here and rambled on about photography in general so far, but I also had a fun assignment for The Washington Post this month that I hope to share with you soon!

In the meantime, feel free to contact me if you want to work together.

Til then,

Annika