<sup>My interest in observing things, especially nature, started already in childhood. As my parents told, I could sit for hours in the grass and look at bees and bugs doing their thing. With 14 I inherited my grandfather’s full camera set. But Kodak Retina III from the 60s was laying for a year and I didn´t know what to do with it. At some point I decided to give it a try and already in six months I was heading an an extracuricular school group for photography, working together in the bw lab. 

This led to building my own bw-lab in a tiny space behind our bathroom at home and buying my first studio flash unit. Even though I was growing up in a provincial town of Freiburg-in-Breisgau, close to the Swiss/French border, my destiny was set. With my developing interest in photography, I was looking through all the books in our local store, discovering such names as Ansel Adams, Peter Lindbergh, Helmuth Newton and Steve Mc Curry. As my craft developed, I became courageous enough to take part in photo contests. Shortly after I finished school, I won a prize at German Youth Photography Contest, leading to an invitation for a weekend in Berlin filled with photo workshops and masterclasses. The pictures I saw there shocked me as they were miles away from the things I’ve seen so far. It was a moment of awakening to be confronted with all these different approaches of art photography from Robert Frank to Bechers’. 

From now on I decided to get into arts and my first step was to apply to the Schule für Gestaltung, Basel. During my prep year we were coached in all creative subjects, except photography and to fill in this gap I was making an internship at the advertising photographer’s studio back in Freiburg. Basel was a great experience, but I made a decision to make my main education at HAW Hamburg with a focus on communication design. After getting my intermediate diploma I decided to take a gap year and leave to New York, to pursue my passion of photography. New York as a street photography Mecca was haunting me and as long as I was already there, I decided to study for half a year at the Internation Center of Photography on Manhattan.

After NY experience and my return back to studies in Hamburg, everything looked bleak for me. Things changed after graduation in 2000 as my career was launched with getting on the roster of Bransch, a very influencial photography representation. From then on my advertising career was boosted. Enhanced by my interest in the world and travelling, my photography style became sharp, crisp and well-composed. My personal icon was British Wallpaper magazine and very soon I started to collaborate with them, having amazing assignments which further developed my style.

I moved on with various advertising campaigns combining cars, people and fashion. In mid-2000s I started working on the Russian market, getting a lot of support of my fresh style but as time passed I felt that I need to move on with visual reinvention of my craft. 

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 the world changed and so did I. In 2012 I left BRANSCH and developed myself as a more warm, realistic editorial photographer in the fields of travel, reportage and food. Things were going well with the editorial assignments, but the rise of social media brought new challenges. Time to start back in the future.</sup>