In a dynamic mixture of cubism, impressionism and futurism, my works are a fast-paced adventure journey that generates time and space into a whole. It goes to the most frequently seen places in Europe as well as to the occasional places that very few people see. I seek the magical interplay of optical depth and spectacular perspective. I walk through my motifs, break them down into many individual shots and later reassemble them in a complex way to create a new and unusual aesthetic.
Dozens of individual shots are put together to form an image sandwich. I want to enthrall, challenge and transport the viewer to a vibrant kiosk on the Belgian border, a Mont Saint Michel besieged by crowds of people or a wide awake Amsterdam celebrating the weekend with its inhabitants.
I create scenes that radiate familiarity, whose fleetingness triggers new visual experiences that only seem to place the collective imagery at the centre. It is a deliberate deconstruction and re-creation of the big picture, of the moment. My motifs appear familiar at first glance, but a closer look reveals the finely assembled individual parts that lend the famous and unknown places a completely new rhythm. This new view of the world is split up like a kaleidoscope into several overlapping fragments. This way of seeing focusses and defocusses at the same time.
In my works, the whole has mysteriously and magically travelled further than the fragments captured by the camera. The whole is composed partly of what is remembered and partly of what is imagined - in the same way we are used to seeing. I work exclusively with cameras and photographs, which I later process digitally.
Finally, the motifs are printed on aluminium.
Born and raised with a Walkman and a mullet haircut in a middle-class row house in the middle of Hamburg-Langenhorn, Germany, I got my Voigtländer Prominent viewfinder camera and three cartridges of Ilford Black and White film from my dad when I was 12. At 19, I went to Paris with the Voigtländer and a huge amount of Kodak film to copy Feininger and Doisneau. I met the flamenco dancer Bettina la Castagno on the Säntis in Switzerland and later accompanied her around Europe for a year as her personal photographer. During my studies at the HWP in Hamburg, I met "Rosie". Jens Peter "Rosie" Rosendahl from the Jim Rakete studio. He was an assistant at Jim Rakete and introduced me to the content of artistic photography. Later I founded a photo agency and became chief photographer of a daily newspaper in Oldenburg, Germany and then became a lecturer for photography at the Jade Hochschule Wilhelmshafen until I became a lecturer for artistic photography at the Oldenburger Kunstschule/ Werkschule. In 2017 I became a permanent member of the Dutch photo agency Lensculture in Amsterdam.
CASTLE SQUARE OF OLDENBURG, Photography, print on metal, 100x75x4cm
HOUSE OF FIELDWORKER AT THE FIELD, Photography, print on metal, 100x75x4cm
MONT SAINT MICHEL WITH MEADOWS AND AUDIENCE, Photography, print on metal, 100x75x4cm
ONLOOKERS IN BERLIN, Photography, print on metal, 100x75x4cm
THE DOM OF AACHEN, Photography, print on metal, 100x75x4cm