Munich: The special pictures of the sports photographer Christina Pahnke – Munich

In a person like Uli Hoeneß, it is particularly easy to see what has changed in the football stadium. 30 years ago, when FC Bayern was still playing in the Olympic Stadium, they were surrounded by photographers even when they sat down on the substitutes’ bench. Once, “in a mad game”, as Christina Pahnke relates, Hoeneß was no longer sitting, he was lying down. “He jumps up at a gate and falls on his stomach, full can next to me, 24 millimeters!”

Nowadays such photos are no longer possible, for various reasons. Hoeneß would probably no longer lie on his stomach, nobody else does that in an industry that was once known as the “Bundesliga circus”. But it is also the case that the photographers are no longer allowed to lie on their stomachs – not a joke, but a requirement of the German Football League. The television or the streaming service bring more and more cameras with them, sometimes 25, sometimes 37, one even flies over the players, but the photographers with the gray camisoles behind the gang are reversed from viewing angles. Nobody is allowed to sit at the coach’s side anymore anyway. “The TV cameras are getting closer and closer and we are getting further and further away,” says Pahnke. After all, it is thanks to the Association of German Sports Journalists with its photographer-speakers that freelancers could and can regularly go to the stadium even during the pandemic.

Christina Pahnke is sitting in her house in Pasing, there is coffee from a carafe, the dog wants to play. Such quiet moments are rare in the life of the 58-year-old. She had a permanent job for five years as a museum photographer in the graphic collection. “I did repros for books or catalogs, a completely different job,” she says. A safe job. She learned a lot about art there, she says, sports photography is of course “much livelier”. But it also saved art a little way into sport. Pahnke is considered a columnist among sports photographers. As one who seeks a story behind the story.

Together with her partner and now husband Stefan Matzke, she founded the Sampics agency. You not only take photos of the Bayern soccer players’ home games, but also the away games. Likewise the games of the Bayern basketball players from TSV 1860 Munich. Pahnke and Matzke also experienced a lot of exciting things at the Olympic Games. In Beijing she took one of the famous photos of weightlifter Matthias Steiner, who is holding the gold medal in one hand and the picture of his deceased wife in the other.

Open detailed view

It is of course important to have such photos in your portfolio. There are plenty of Sampics from recent history, one dated May 25, 2013, at Wembley Stadium. It’s about the most acclaimed Kullerball of all time in Munich: Arjen Robben overcomes Roman Weidenfeller and makes Bayern the Champions League winner. Pahnke sat slightly offset behind the goal, from her corner you could see Robben directly behind the Dortmund goalkeeper. The one moment to capture, she had it. “It was relatively easy to photograph, the ball rolled towards me,” she says. He was traveling so slowly, she adds with a laugh, because you had a lot of time right away.

Open detailed view

There are journalists, veterans, who probably know more about FC Bayern than Oliver Kahn or Herbert Hainer. And journalists sometimes envy the photographers that they hear things on the sidelines that you can’t hear in the main stand and would like to have in the block. What is special about Pahnke and Matzke, however, is their holistic approach: There is hardly anyone who knows Munich sport as a whole better than these two. Because they don’t just take photos of Arjen Robben, but also the replaced TSV Ottobrunn II player who first lights a cigarette. Pahnke also shot countless photos for SZ local sport, the series covering a complete season of a ninth league culminated in an exhibition with a reading in “Ed Moses”. One photo from this series took second place in 2007 in the “Sports Photo of the Year” category. Appropriately after a game by Ottobrunn II against SV Agfa. “It had a very special atmosphere,” says Pahnke, who likes to put the background to a story in numbers: “It was dark – a hundred and twenty-fifth, 4000 iso, I think. And a mood that is only found in local sports.”

So what is it about local sport? “You’re closer,” she says. Also: “Daisy football. Dandelions. No gangs. You are completely exposed to the rain.” But as close to the coaches as it was possible in the Olympic Stadium at the time. Photos from amateur football have that aesthetic that was inherent in professional football at the beginning of Pahnke’s career, and which today is most likely from the magazine 11 friends is transported. Pahnke learned from Werner Rzehaczek, a kind of Ernst Happel of photojournalism: a grinder. “Werek was the toughest school of my life,” she says of the time at the agency.

Your description from that time shows how much the work has changed. Back then: Snap a hundred films, drive them to the agency and develop them, drying the films with the hairdryer so that it goes faster. 100 prints in black and white and in color, one for each newspaper delivered, then bring the photos to the train station by 10 p.m. Today: insert the chip from the camera into the laptop, cut it, send it. That sometimes means that you have to leave work earlier. But there is also the risk of missing an important moment because you are now also busy with the technology during the game.

So today there is FC Bayern, who play against Barcelona. And there is what Pahnke describes: “Sunday morning, eleven o’clock, backlight, smoke like in a pub, more tobacco than sport. But the moment you play, you take football just as seriously.” So Pahnke does that too. In this way you get to know people who the big media only care about when they are famous. This is how she met today’s Bundesliga coach Manuel Baum as a goalkeeper for FC Ismaning. Stefan Matzke, in turn, met Julian Nagelsmann in the 1860 jersey.

It’s about both: the daily news, the picture of the winning goal scorer or the missed penalty. But it is also about the documentation of sports history in all its facets. About thinking about the historical aspect during the hectic 90 minutes. How much it is worth to have such people on site is only known much later.