The short
I am a creative with a camera. My visual interests vary wildly but they feed off the same source: My love for ideas. Conceiving them myself, receiving them from or crafting them with others…to me, the entire process is a thing of beauty. However, my favourite bit is making them come to life.
I usually wear a hat on location.
The long story
As a kid and son of a motor journalist I was intrigued by the grainy rally & racing photographs on our walls. To me, photography was the coolest thing after car racing. So at the age of 14 I picked up a camera and started shooting cars… and my friends on BMX bikes.
Paid work for car magazines followed in my twenties. Soon after, while studying photography and film, I gravitated towards themes related to youth culture. In ’97 I traded my hometown Cologne for London to put this into an editorial context. I started shooting for magazines such as Esquire, GQ and Wallpaper. The publication that I had always been especially fond of was The Face. Unfortunately, it folded soon after my first fashion-commission from them was published. Bummer.
In 2000 I moved to the US. More than ever, photography became a way to express my wonder and bewilderment, especially when facing the dazzling attitudes of my newly found hometown New York. My advertising work intensified and served an increasingly diverse range of clients while my personal work merged all kinds of genres into one vibrant, colourful and conceptual world.
In 2008, I made Berlin my home. My photography gradually shifted towards a more personal and ever shifting approach, driven by experimentation and…well, empathy for my fellow humans. Which probably has a lot to do with me becoming a father to two very cool human beings. These guys taught me a thing or two but mostly this:
