Douglas Friedman Puts Kohler’s Cast Iron Tubs in the Spotlight
The plumbing giant’s new “Tub in a Barn” campaign reimagines its 19th-century origin story through the interiors photographer’s cinematic lens
Two years ago, Douglas Friedman and a motley film crew ventured out into the sweltering desert near Marfa, Texas, to capture a toilet in the road. The interiors photographer perched Kohler’s luminous Numi 2.0 smart toilet atop a turntable on a wide-open desert highway, its high-tech build exuding sculptural poise on a seemingly endless asphalt ribbon to nowhere. “I tasked myself with trying to make a glossy sports car commercial about a toilet,” Friedman tells Galerie of the experience, which recreated the plumbing giant’s iconic 1981 advertisement, aptly called “Toilet in the Road.” Controversial at the time, the campaign recast Kohler’s sandstone-hued San Raphael porcelain throne as a Donald Judd–like aberration in the barren badlands near the remote town where Friedman calls home and the late artist’s influence is still widely felt.
Seeking similar treatment for another collection, Kohler dialed up Friedman again and threw things back even further. The latest campaign, “Tub in a Barn,” reimagines the brand’s fabled 19th-century origin story through Friedman’s cinematic lens. Centered on the company’s range of vintage freestanding cast iron tubs, the video returns to the humble Wisconsin barn where, in 1883, founder John Michael Kohler transformed a horse trough into an enameled tub for the first time. “The intention was to show how beautiful the craftsmanship is,” Friedman says. “We wanted to show that it was made, not manufactured.”
As beams of sunlight wash through the barn, slicing through mist and dust, the tub’s defining features come into focus—the rim’s gentle curves, its smooth enameled interior complemented by the exterior’s rough-hewn painted finish, and decorative legs inspired by turn-of-the-century houses. “The light makes it more mysterious because the shadows are getting brighter and the highlights are moving across,” Friedman explains. “That gives it another dimension.”
Executing this vision required a massive crew common on large-scale commercial sets, a slight departure from the lean team Friedman relies on when shooting interiors, many of which have graced the pages of Galerie. He pushed the production to a similarly ambitious scale seen on “Toilet in the Road,” but this shoot introduced an exciting new challenge: conveying movement without actually moving the object. “We figured if we’re not going to move the tub, let’s move everything around it,” he says. The team spent several months scouting hundreds of barns across America’s Dairyland before picking a timeworn structure with slatted wood and perfectly positioned windows on a hill—ideal for Friedman’s vision of sweeping light and shadow play.
“I had this crazy, complex idea of getting a giant 10K light mounted on a 40-foot crane on an 80-foot dolly truck outside the barn, swinging it and filling the barn with smoke and mist,” he recalls. “With the light, you can see the history and the quality. It feels so hand-wrought and organic.” The campaign indeed reframes Kohler’s cast iron as an enduring symbol of heritage craftsmanship and sustainability; the brand’s products using the material are made with more than 88 percent recycled content.
The real challenge, Friedman admits, “was holding someone’s attention while looking at a black bathtub for 30 seconds.” By that measure, the end result succeeds—and offers a striking tribute not only to Kohler’s past but to the future of heirloom design. And for Friedman, the project was a personal success: “I might have one in my house!”