But the most bizarre thing of all was the experience of the Massgames themselves. The first impression of this gigantic show was so intense that on the first evening after leaving the stadium I couldn’t believe that I had just seen it with my own eyes. Fortunately, we were able to persuade our tour guide to see the show again, so that on the second evening I was able to make sure that I was actually here and really experienced it all. It was amazing.

I had already thought that the show would be great, after all I had flown halfway around the world just for it. So I had bought a reasonably fast, but above all very long lens for my small SLR in Beijing and used it to take a spectacular series of pictures.

For a long time I didn’t know what exactly to do with the pictures until I showed them to an agency boss with whom I was working and who had published an illustrated book with Nicolai Verlag at the time. He was so impressed by my pictures that he recommended me to Hans von Trotha, the publishing director at the time. Trotha liked my photos, but he was still hesitant because he was afraid to take the risk of publishing a book about a dance show in the world’s most bizarre military dictatorship by a completely unknown photographer.

It wasn’t until I produced a prototype of the book together with my friend and graphic designer Felix Kempf, which Trotha was able to show around at various book fairs, that things started to move. In autumn of the same year, I finally had the picture book in my hands – the first and still the only one about the North Korean Massgames.