It was a running joke.
If we were still in business after ten years we said we’d throw a crazy party in the Mosel, at Ulli Stein’s “Haus Waldfrieden.” We’d bring our families and our loved ones and invite all the German growers we work with and some friends from the U.S. – the people who have kept us, somehow, in business.
Ulli Stein (center in black), our host, my hero, receiving a standing ovation for a half-century of being an absolute badass and for never waivering from his commitment to the steep-slope, terraced viticulture of the Mosel, in good times and bad. He is a living legend of the Mosel.
On Saturday, July 29th, 2023, some 130+ people showed up, from California to New York, from all over Germany – a great friend from Brazil. For a moment we were all together.
What a massive fucking headache this was to organize, absolutely exhausting and expensive… I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I’ll never forget it.
And, as chance would have it, the evening was well documented: one of Germany’s preeminent photographers happens to be not only good friends with Stein… he lives just across the river.
Wolfgang Wesener, WOWE, was born in Germany in 1960. He moved to New York in 1984 and for over a decade he photographed an astonishing spectrum of people, from musicians, architects and artists to intellectuals, chefs and politicians, including William Burroughs, Madonna, Andy Warhol, Miles Davis, Run DMC, Sting, James Brown, Bono, Pharoah Sanders, Alain Ducasse, Bruce Willis, Richard Serra, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gerhard Richter, Jasper Johns, and hundreds, thousands more.
He returned to his home in the Moselle, just across the river from Stein’s Haus Waldfrieden, in 2022. In early 2023, he agreed to photograph vom Boden’s tenth anniversary party. Some of this photographs from the evening are presented below, for the historical record. (A fuller WOWE biography is provided below.)
All photography is for sale from WOWE; forward all inquiries to info@vomboden.com and we can put you in touch with WOWE.
The group photograph… the honor of a lifetime, to be surrounded by all these people… if only for a moment.
Felix Keller, Philip Lardot, and Rosalie Curtin.
Scott Frank of Bow & Arrow and @soilpimp of @soilpimp.
John Ritchie, @soilpimp, @squintingcyclops and Stephen Bitterolf.
Jonas Dostert, Moritz Hoffmann (Vollenweider), Julien Renard and Christoph Wolber (Wasenhaus).
Brothers Piet and Ulli Stein.
Hans Josef Becker
Luminaries of the German wine world and New York restaurant scene.
Carsten Saalwächter in a good mood.
vom Boden, photographed by WOWE, July 29th, 2023, at Haus Waldfrieden an der Mosel.
Below are three of my favorite seminal WOWE photographs from the 1980s, including cultural icons William Burroughs, Madonna, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ulli Stein. You may buy WOWE’s compendium of work – Twenty-Five Years of Portraits by WOWE – here. For inquiries into purchasing any of WOWE’s photographs, email info@vomboden.com
William Burroughs and Madonna, 1987, photograph by WOWE.
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1986, photograph by WOWE.
Ulli Stein, 2001, photograph by WOWE.
WOWE was born in Cologne in 1960. He studied design at the Folkwangschule Essen in the 1980s while already a photographer for the music magazine Spex. In 1984, he moved to New York to assist the renowned photographers Hans Namuth and Evelyn Hofer. At this time he also began to photograph New York’s nightlife for Details magazine. In 1986 he began a twelve-year portraiture collaboration with the FAZ-Magazine, the weekly supplement to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, what would be the German equivalent to the New York Times Magazine. During this time WOWE photographed an astonishing spectrum of people, from musicians, architects and artists to intellectuals, chefs and politicians, including William Burroughs, Madonna, Andy Warhol, Miles Davis, Run DMC, Sting, James Brown, Bono, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Alain Ducasse, I.M. Pei, Miles Davis, Bruce Willis, Karl Lagerfeld, Richard Serra, Umberto Eco, Morrissey, Robert Mondavi, Ulli Stein, Gore Vidal, Paul Bocuse, William Dafoe, Mia Farrow, Herbie Hancock, Public Enemy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ferran Adrià, Egon Müller III, Gerhard Richter, Jasper Johns, Grace Johns and hundreds, thousands more.
