Armin Rohde turns 70: The man with the camera

For his 70th birthday, Armin Rohde can be described as a veteran of actors without hesitation. After his big breakthrough in 1992 with the role of the prudled sports car driver “Bierchen” in Sönke Wortmann’s cult comedy “Kleine Haie”, he was seen in countless great cinema and TV productions. To this day, Rohde has been the top of the German acting guild and cannot complain about the lack of role offers.

Bergmannsohn, born in the Ruhrpott town of Gladbeck in 1955, originally not strived for a career in front of the camera. Like him, as a young man, after the school was demolished shortly before graduating from high school, he dreamed of a career as a photographer. “I would even have appealed to war photography, although I don’t know if I had been nerves for it,” the actor recalled. “But fashion photography would definitely have irritated me, reportage too.”

The fact that it didn’t happen in the end had to do with a crime whose victim he became in the middle of the seventies. “Back then I had a camera equipment that I deserved on a shell in winter,” said Rohde, “and it was then stolen from two hippies in the USA who had taken me as a hitchhike.” He added this: “Today I might even have to be grateful to the two, otherwise I might never have become an actor.”

Many decades after the theft, the Armin Rohde, who was approaching film star, rediscovered his old passion for photography. For a few years now, the energetic character actor has rarely been seen without his beloved Leica Q2, which he always has during his numerous appearances on the red carpet – in order to take the assembled photographers.

his late return to photography resulted from the fact that he stopped smoking in 2018. “Since then I always have to hold something in my hand. This is now my camera.” he said there. “It’s almost like an addiction again!” In one, Rohde revealed that this search makes him even take his camera to bed. “I even have the camera under my pillow while going to bed,” he said there. “It always has to be within reach, a maximum of one arm length, otherwise I will be restless.”

The actor now not only presents his photographic work, but also on one. There are numerous impressive photo routes in which the everyday work of Rohdes is clearly reflected. Many pictures were taken during ongoing filming on the set, and its black and white portraits are almost always fellow actors such as Christoph Maria Herbst, Lars Rudolph or Dieter Hallervorden. It is clear to the works that he would have had what it takes for a shiny photographer.

Shortly before his 70th birthday, Rohde also presented a selection of the photos that he has been shooting from the red carpet for years. From January 24th to March 3rd in Hessische Hattersheim he showed pictures on which he made a curious change of perspective and, in turn, photograph the photographer as a photographer. To finish the exhibition, the 16 large -format works were auctioned for a good cause.

The fact that he even managed to do so with “Armin Rohde shoots back” with this exhibition should fulfill the actor with satisfaction. The hippies, which at the time destroyed his dream of a photographer career, showed it again on his old days.