Yvan in Berlin

Street fashion photography was this weird democracy moment that happened around 2005 or so. Suddenly the people who mattered in fashion were the ones walking around ordinary cities in ordinary clothes, photographed by kids with cameras and blogs. No invitation required, no gallery representing you, just an eye for what people were actually wearing and the confidence to think that mattered more than a runway show. Yvan Rodic’s Facehunter was the clearest proof that the whole system had flipped.

When he came to Berlin for a book signing—his first book, about three hundred of his best photographs—I went with Sandra, who shot for the blog back then. I didn’t really know what to expect from him in person. The gap between the image and the person is usually depressing.

But he was just genuinely nice. Patient with the crowd’s questions, took a few photos if people asked, signed books. He asked about what we wrote on this blog. Not the performative curiosity of someone checking a box—he actually wanted to know. Most internet famous people either treat you like you’re lucky to breathe the same air or they make you feel like you’re bothering them. He was just interested.

What I remember most is how little he needed to prove anything. He didn’t perform being important or successful. He’d built something real and was still doing it because he cared, and that was obviously enough. The book was just a document of five or six years of looking. Some of it was trend-obsessed—the styling from 2006 is almost unrecognizable now—but it was all genuine. He had taste and he wasn’t self-conscious about finding it in ordinary places.

I wish more people building things online had that ease about it. Most of them seem either exhausted by the attention or addicted to it, trapped between states where nothing feels real. Yvan just seemed happy to be doing the work. That was probably the whole thing, now that I think about it.