Artist Statement

I’m the quintessential nomad. I was born and raised in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, have lived in various parts of the USA and am currently based in Toronto, Canada. 

That sense of wanderlust, of being uprooted, has never left me. I don’t anchor my concept of “home” to a familiar physical space – home is a state of mind I enter wherever I’m inspired to create the work I want, or when I’m surrounded by people I care about. 

As a street photographer, I can usually be found on the streets of New York and other urban centers in the US. The dynamic of an entire universe is contained there, in more intense ways than anywhere else. As people go about their daily lives, they sometimes show a deep level of humanity that transcends their hardships. These are the moments I’m after.

I was trained in a profession in which humans at their most vulnerable grant permission to a stranger to invade their privacy. As a result, I have always had an intense interest in the dynamics of power, trust and control when it comes to human interaction.

On the street, these dynamics can reveal a unique connection, a kind of truth that would otherwise not be foregrounded. When a human being connects to another and - even for a split second - relinquishes a certain level of control, it is fascinating to what extent strangers can share an alternate truth about themselves that was hidden not only to the outside world, but perhaps even to themselves. It is in these moments that individual emotion transcends the personal realm and gains universally understood context.