MAN TO MAN

The production reunites the original creative team 39 years after they first staged the piece together at the Traverse in Edinburgh in 1987: performer Tilda Swinton, director Stephen Unwin, stage designer Bunny Christie and lighting designer Ben Ormerod. Ruediger Glatz worked alongside the production from the first rehearsal through the London run and beyond. He photographed Tilda Swinton as she became Ella Gericke, the crane operator’s widow who takes on her husband’s name, his trade and his clothes to survive the Third Reich, the war and the division of Germany. Shot in black and white, the book moves between portrait, prop, gesture and stage. It holds the production in the same observational register Glatz has brought to his long-term work on performance, from Olivier Saillard to the fashion houses of Paris. MAN TO MAN is the first of two parallel publications on the production. It continues Glatz’s series of photo-based homages: images made close to the work, offered back to it.