Markus Söder spends a lot of money on photos

Dhe Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, a picture of a man, likes to think in pictures. So it’s no wonder that the state chancellery multiplied spending on photographers under his aegis compared to his predecessor Horst Seehofer. This resulted in a request from the SPD parliamentary group in the state parliament. After 2017, Seehofer’s last full year in office, the costs were only 10,891.47 euros, in 2022 the State Chancellery spent 178,618.13 euros on freelance photographers alone. She also employs a permanent photographer whose salary is said to be between 3,000 and 5,600 euros a month.

Is that all a lot, is that little? State Chancellor Florian Herrmann (CSU) said: “The SPD is once again acting in its typical double standards: According to media reports, your own Chancellor Olaf Scholz spent more than 500,000 euros on photos last year alone.” Unlike Scholz, Söder is of course also party leader, So he has another tool to stage his 41 visits to the folk festival since Pentecost (according to the “Bild” newspaper). Söder himself said on Tuesday when asked about the difference to Seehofer: “Today we live in a different communication society.”

“Show: We were there”

He’s probably right about that. In 2022, for example, the Federal Ministry of Economics advertised a job for a photographer who should stage Robert Habeck on all trips and appointments. Budget: up to 350,000 euros. More than 100,000 euros were due in 2022 to accompany the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst (CDU). Again, the “Bild” newspaper calculated what Annalena Baerbock’s make-up artist costs at the Foreign Office: 7,500 euros a month, flat rate.

Söder said of his photos that they were “an answer to fake news”. In addition, it is “extremely important to him personally that people feel that politics is not just something aloof, but is present”. The images are “part of a communication strategy to show that we were there, we’re doing it, we’re taking care of it.”

How well that works is a matter of opinion. While the communications consultant Hendrik Wieduwilt recently described Söder as a “photo god”, referring to not harmless back-to-back pictures with the President of the Landtag Ilse Aigner, others have observed that Söder’s photographers have a particularly good eye for the negative aesthetic potential of those people , who are next to Söder in the photos. Still others think that the most well-known Söder icons of recent years – the tree hugger and the cross hanger – have started a life of their own, which he cannot fully agree with.