ABOUT MY ART:

Art or artistic activities is an important part of me. Regardless of whether I am painting, drawing, sculpting or photographing, I am submerged in my element. The creative process “is my elixir” and is now, as it has been since my youth, as much a part of my life as getting up each morning and going to bed each evening. It’s especially important to me that I am able to make my own path and develop my own individual style. In today’s world, there are so many distractions. Everything is fast, wants to be powerful, always desiring to stand above the rest - regardless of the consequences and losing sight of what is important.

I honor in life, as in art, the details - the small, seemingly unimportant things that one could quickly lose sight of but without which life would be uninteresting. It is important to me to connect to these details and to orient my life on these values. My work is also based on these values.  It is all too easy, for example, to walk by statues in a park or some other location, without taking notice because they appear insignificant. Instead of walking by, take the time to stop for just a moment and reflect on the objects - sometimes they are standing in groups and are communicating with one another. They tell stories, laugh or just chatter. They go unnoticed because time no longer teaches us to observe. However, it’s worth it to give them one moment of our time. And then we can feel their breath. We can guess, possibly even hear what they want to tell us. In my work, I set out to unearth the essence of the object, attempting to uncover its curiosity, its defiance, its vanity or even its sorrow and recreate this in photographs and paintings. I approach old edifices or rock formations in much the same way. The old stones are full of secrets. They tell of centuries old tales and live never-ending dreams - they are ruins of time.

I like to work in black-and-white. For me, black is an important counterpart and rival to white. Just as light would be unbearable without darkness, so is darkness lost without the shades of gray it receives from light. They have always belonged together and, in this respect, are neither good nor bad. This cannot be questioned, for day would not exist without night. Yet still, black and white are separate entities without being enemies. Together they are an unbeatable team with a one-of-a-kind contrast that triggers fascination in me. No other color combination is able to achieve this in the same manner. Black, in the sense of darkness, means a fascination for the “beauty of the mysterious” to me. The mystic of light in darkness describes the stories that the pictures tell that I in turn invite to become a part of my book projects.

Now I would like to tell you about the process from which I derive my photographs, a process that    begins with colorful, bright pictures and ends in mystical metamorphoses. A special moment is revealed to me. A transformation process that could be compared to a “dance of shadows” takes place on my computer screen. My first book is called “Round Dance of Shadows” in honor of this transformation. This transformation is the moment in which the present steps aside and makes space for the past. Even when I’m onsite getting ready to take the pictures, I already have this process in my mind. I experience a sort of “anticipation for the darkness”. This process could be compared to the efforts that go into making a film. On television, events that happened in the past are often portrayed in black-white. The shades of gray in the pictures arouse memories and old stories to be discovered anew. The modified color scheme in my pictures leads to a different way of seeing - a new discovery of the old, stony witnesses of time...