“The best illustrator of our time is a German who lives in Berlin but works primarily for New York,” wrote Andreas Platthaus back in 2012 in the arts section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Does that still hold true? Christoph Niemann’s work has appeared on the front covers of The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration, among others. With his unique multimedia approach to graphic design, he is constantly expanding the range of possibilities for creating something entirely his own, without making it complicated.
Andreas Platthaus, head of the literature section at the FAZ, author of numerous books (including on comics) and also a long-standing member of the Max und Moritz jury, puts Christoph Niemann through his paces in conversation.