About the edition
The Marlboro Man in the smoke. The 18-meter-tall advertising icon on the roof of the former Philip Morris tobacco company headquarters in Berlin-Neukölln could hardly be more fittingly staged. Yet nothing here is staged. Photographer and actor Lars Eidinger captured the image, almost casually. "My pictures are in the tradition of the readymade," he says. "The subjects are not influenced, manipulated, staged, or contrived. I don't search for them. We encounter each other." For the Cinema Editions, Eidinger combines his baryta print with the Italo-Western classic "Once Upon a Time in the West." The cowboy with saddle, lasso, and cigarette dangling from his lips: hardly anything seems so out of touch with the times—even for Eidinger. In the supposedly good guy fighting against evil, he now sees the intruder and occupier. In the cigarette, instead of a symbol of freedom and adventure, a deadly poison. In that sense, the Marlboro Man in the misty clouds can also be interpreted as a dissolving myth. As a farewell to outdated ideals, set to the soundtrack of Ennio Morricone.
artflash: What do you associate with the Marlboro Man?
Lars Eidinger: I find the cowboy an interesting motif because he represents something completely different today than he did back then. I grew up with the cowboy as the good guy and the Indigenous people as the bad guy. The good cowboy, riding peacefully through the valley, is then attacked and shot with arrows by the evil, hostile "Indians." Today, I see him as the occupier, the intruder, the invader who calls the native people Indians because Columbus got lost and thought he was in India. He represents injustice and wears symbols like the lasso, which stands for domestication, domination, and oppression. Horses are flight animals. There's something perverse about sitting on their backs. The revolver represents death. So does the cigarette. The image was meant to suggest a feeling of freedom. On the contrary, cigarettes are a deadly poison that drives one into addiction and a lack of freedom.
The cowboy in the smoke – what attracted you to this image?
Eidinger: I discovered the image when I was on my way to the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts with filmmaker Reiner Holzemer, who made the documentary "To Be or Not to Be" about me. As we drove by, I noticed that it looked as if the smoke from the chimney was coming out of the cigarette. I took the picture with my mobile phone. I tried several times to recreate it in high resolution with a DSLR camera, but the cowboy was either turned in a different position, the sky wasn't as blue, or the smoke had gone out or was blowing in the opposite direction. Chance or fate often presents a perfection that would be extremely difficult to reconstruct.
How do you create your photographs?
Eidinger: I believe in the moment, the immediate, the now, the present. My images are in the tradition of the readymade. The subjects are not influenced, manipulated, staged, or contrived. I don't search for them. We encounter each other. It's about being in the flow, in harmony with one's surroundings, resonating with one's environment; then the hidden becomes apparent. Photography is the bridge from the subconscious to the conscious. Something subconscious triggers the allure of photography, while the true dimension, the multifaceted meaning, the profundity only unfolds upon viewing. Every image is a self-portrait of the viewer. It always means and signifies something different, depending on who is looking at it. Just as one appears in different guises in a dream, one encounters oneself in photography. It is a mirror.
About the artist
Lars Eidinger (born 1976 in Berlin) uses photography as a form of self-exploration and as an invitation to the viewer: “It is a mirror.”
In October 2026, his photobook “Who’s there?” will be published, titled after the opening words of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a role Eidinger calls his “life’s role.” In it, he reflects on the idea that art is beyond morality, quoting Hamlet: “Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
The book concludes his photographic trilogy following “Autistic Disco” and “O Mensch.” His works, created with smartphone and SLR camera, have been shown at venues including K21 /Kunstsammlung NRW, Hamburger Kunsthalle, and gallery Ruttkowski;68.
A solo exhibition titled “Who’s there?” is planned for autumn 2026 at Kunsthalle Tübingen.
