This page should tell a little bit about myself, what photography means to me and how I see art.
About myself
This is probably the hardest part of everything. Writing about myself and how awesome I am. This will always be my least favorite things in life. So let’s start with a quote:
“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.”
I could finish this whole page just with this sentence. But I know, people like to read more about the person behind those photographs, so here are some intimate facts about myself:
I was born and still live and love in Berlin. Even though I’ve traveled half of the world, Berlin is where my heart lives.
My passions are watching movies, smooth jazz, good food, traveling, photos of beautiful things, a first drink in a bar just after they open for the evening, adventures, perfection, Scottish whisky, the beauty of the rough sea, a glass of red wine with Parmigiano, curiosity of the unknown…and, of cause…taking photographs.
And now I like to end this section with another quote:
“For me, photography is not about looking, it’s about feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.”
About photography
So did digital photography killed photography? No idea, but it definitely killed the magic of photography.
I remember the first time I developed a film myself: you went into a pitch dark room and load the film into the drum, put all the different liquids into, shake it according to the instructions and then, finally, open the drum, take out the film and hold it against the light to get the first sight of your exposures. That was pure magic. The same happened when I was in a darkroom, exposed a print and then let it slip into the developer solution. The moment you slowly see the image appear on the paper…again, pure magic.
Today things are faster, clients don’t want to wait for a film to be developed, they want to see the results instantly. Today you take a picture, check it on the screen and repeat the process until it looks right to you. Today you can’t see what’s actually taken as a photograph and what has been tweaked on a computer. But does this matter? I would say not really! It’s the final image that counts!
The only problem I see is, that today everything needs to be perfect. There is no room for imperfection. But luckily you can see that the trend reverses. Old film brands are coming back. Old film cameras are more expensive than digital ones. Polaroid had his big revival with the Impossible Project and I’m a big fan of those little Instax prints. Even though the input is a digital picture that you expose on an instant film, it’s still a chemical process and the moment when the picture slowly appears brings back some of the magic.
About art
So let’s talk about art. What is art? A rusty nail in a log. Is this art? Probably not. Until the moment you notice that this has been created by Joseph Beuys. And suddenly a stupid rusty nail has become art. Edgar Degas once said:
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
That is the only true answer to that question. Everything can be art as long as it tells a story and you can find people that are interested in that story. And that’s basically the reason why I created this site. I want to show my work, tell a story and find people who are interested in my stories.
I want to show my art!
And I’ve done it quite successfully in the past. A lot of my images have been published in books and magazines. I had a couple of exhibitions and successfully sell my prints. Here are just some of the books & magazines (on- and offline) that published my images:
ProfiFoto (Friends with Vision, Germany) • Docma (Germany) • The Mammoth Book of Erotic Women (Carrol & Gref Publishers) • Naked Women (Quarto Inc. / Umschau Buchverlag) • Querschnitt (Exhibition) • Naked (Feierabend Verlag) • Clean Fine Art Gallery (Weingarten Verlag) • Tomorrow (Germany) • Max (Germany) • TV Spielfilm (Germany) • Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Germany) • Tagesspiegel (Germany) • Fotoheft (Germany) • freenet.de Magazine (Germany) • Happy Web (Italy) • ff-Magazin fuer Fotografie (Germany)
I hope you enjoyed this little essay and as always, I like your feedback. So let’s get in touch with me…