Artist Statement

Photography begins for me where my perception seeks expression. Where my inner feelings cannot be put into words – free from labels and predetermined meanings. It begins in those moments when I am willing to engage, without knowing with what. Then, when feelings have no voice, I remain to listen.

While searching for ever new patterns of human longing, reflections, mirrors, blurs and distortions in my work enter into a relationship with symmetrical lines and architectural structures. This graphic order gives my fleeting moments of perception a frame in which they can stabilize and remain in motion at the same time. The interplay between diffuse dynamics and supporting form shapes my visual language and appears again and again in different variations.

Seeing is not an automatic reflex for me. It questions habits of seeing, changes perception and influences how we act.

Series – such as do you see me, Myself-Portraits of the Others or any.one – develop over longer periods of time during walks through urban spaces and remain open in time. People do not necessarily stand at the center of my observation; they become mirrors of what I feel and experience and of my inner world. For me, each series is also a way of discovering what only becomes visible over time and through repeated viewing.

My street photography also emerges during walks and travels. Without a fixed dramaturgy I follow the attention of the small moment. Random situations and almost unnoticed shifts open scenes for me and allow images to appear. In Seeing Red Umbrellas, on a rainy day I decided to follow red umbrellas. Not for a conceptual reason, but simply because I wanted to in that moment. And the street revealed what my imagination allowed.

Beyond the urban environment my gaze turns to expressions of human longing that arise from our relationship with nature and from the deep desire for connection. I see this longing as a force that subtly shapes our thinking and our actions. I am interested in its traces – in our surroundings, in the things we surround ourselves with, in everyday routines and in our beliefs.

In the monochrome series Parallel Lines, photographed at dawn in the baroque park of Nymphenburg Palace, I deal with past loves that remain as a feeling of absence throughout life – although, or perhaps precisely because, they were never lived. Here I began to physically work on my prints: by scratching, varnishing, breaking the surface or adding small color accents I intervene in the surface and extend the photographic process. The image is no longer only a photograph; it becomes material with which I shape and make emotions more visible.

With my work I do not want to provide answers or illustrate ideas. I am interested in what happens between consciousness and the unconscious – those areas where perception and feeling find a common language.