Ulrich Löhr: Between the Last Minute and the First
- Jul 14
- 4 min read
By Silvia Gonzalo, Germany Correspondent
In 1991 he trained the American soldiers headed for the Gulf War. He bought his first camera in 2024.
In Wetzlar, an hour north of Frankfurt, glass is polished for looking at the world. The Leica was born there. Ulrich Löhr worked a few months in that factory, at twenty, surrounded by the raw material lenses are made of. It would be forty years before he looked through one.
He still wears a uniform, on the staff of the state police in Hesse, Germany, in protection and security, and photographs when his shift ends.
He served in the German army as an instructor in Sonthofen, in the Bavarian Alps, at the academy for defense against atomic, biological and chemical weapons.
In the winter of 1991, six crews arrived in Sonthofen from the United States. A chemical attack was feared in the desert and no one knew whether it would come. The German federal government transferred six army reconnaissance vehicles to the United States and entrusted the training of their crews to the academy where Ulrich Löhr taught. The vehicles rode at the head of the column, sealed, not a hatch open, combing the air and the sand for the poison. The Americans named them Fox. From there they were going straight to the Gulf.
On the last day there was a ceremony. The American commander handed the academy a copper plate engraved with the names of all his soldiers. Ulrich Löhr still remembers it, and still hopes he gave them the safety they needed.
Two years later came Somalia. It was the first time Germany had sent armed troops abroad since its founding, a decision that split the whole country. Ulrich Löhr was in that contingent.
Before they left they were outfitted from scratch. Tropical uniform, wide-brimmed hat and the blue beret of the United Nations. They formed up for the group photograph and the noncommissioned officers passing through his courses came out to shake their hands. Good luck. Come home safe.
Outside work he has spent more than ten years as a volunteer at the Frankfurt Marathon and served as a long-term volunteer at the 2024 European football championship, held in Germany.
Photography turned up in his life when he had already lived several lives. For years people told him he had a good eye, and eventually he wanted to find out for himself. What decided him was looking at the pictures a friend took of him at races: he got caught on the background, on that blur behind the face. He wanted to do that, his own way.
Before he photographed anyone, he posed himself, in advertising campaigns. He isn’t after the perfect face. He’s after the exact second someone stops posing.
His friends call him Ulli.
In His Own Words
How close was photography to you in Wetzlar, the German city of Leica?
Not close at all. Before the army I worked three months in that factory. I remember the paternoster, an elevator of open cabins that never stops. I had never seen anything like it. Now, when I go back to Wetzlar, it makes me smile: the new Leica buildings, seen from above, look like camera lenses standing on end.
Somalia 1993 was the German army’s first armed deployment. Did you know at the time that you were living a historic moment?
I knew. Halfway through the mission we had ten days of leave. I went to Wetzlar, to my parents’ house, and regional television was waiting for me there. While we were recording they asked whether I could come to Frankfurt that same night. My father drove me. Quick makeup, two instructions, and suddenly I was next to the anchorwoman, live on air.
You trained soldiers and today you photograph people. Which is the hardest minute?
As an instructor, the last one. Training would end, I would send them off, and from that point on they were on their own. You hope you gave them what they needed. In photography it’s the first. That minute decides whether we understand each other. If it happens, you can see it later in the pictures.
What is one of your sessions like?
I start with a coffee. Not for the coffee, for the person. That half hour is worth more than any camera setting. We talk about life, about what they expect from the day. I almost never give poses: I put the person in a situation, some soap bubbles, a walk. They stop thinking about how they look and just react. I talk, I laugh, and I shoot between two sentences. I know the picture is there when they have forgotten the camera and the smile stops being put on. I don’t photograph poses. I photograph people.
What image do you still have left to make?
Nazaré, on the Atlantic coast of Portugal. There the Atlantic hits Europe with nothing to slow it down and the waves reach nearly a hundred feet. I want to photograph them in the light of dusk. My first great dream I’ve already had, the North Cape, at the northern tip of Norway. Maybe Nazaré is the next one.
His current project sets out to tell someone’s life without showing their face. It’s called Der Weg unter uns, the path beneath us: only the ground that person walks on. Every path is different. The ground is the same.
