Being creative is a very personal, almost intimate process for me. It is the expression of personal thoughts and feelings, for which there are often no suitable words and no space in everyday life. To transfer them into a medium and to make them available to other people also means to open the often closed door into one’s own inner being a little bit and make oneself vulnerable. When I started taking photographs, the pictures were initially only meant for me and some people close to me. I didn’t use Facebook or Instagram and didn’t share anything private with the Internet.

So it was a really big step for me to follow the encouraging words of some kind people and make my pictures available to a larger crowd of people online. The next step, which again took me some time and overcoming, was to involve people in my pictures, because it meant to let people participate very closely in my process and to let them enter this personal, intimate area. Until then, my photography was my escape and it allowed me to dive into another world on my own, especially when I roamed abandoned places and tried to capture the traces of the past. Even though there were sometimes other photographers with me and nearby, it was mostly just me and the room I was standing in. Just the idea of letting someone else into this small world scared me a little. But i am glad to have taken both steps, because all the people i had the pleasure to work with enriched my life and my creative work so incredibly.

From this experience, I appreciate it immensely when I am allowed to be part of a creative process of someone else, when I am given the trust to enter into this intimate realm of another person. This kind of trust and openness is not a matter of course for me. During a shooting with Luise, we both developed the idea that Luise should design a room with her painting for another shooting and that I should photograph her there. When we stood in the room last weekend, everything was actually prepared, the walls were painted and the clothes were ready, Luise turned on her favorite music and suddenly the day took a different course than expected.

Luise disappeared into her creative world again and continued painting, I became a silent observer and photographed her not only in the room but also in her world. It was a wonderful experience to be allowed to immerse myself in this world for a short time and to capture wonderful, genuine moments. Dear Luise, many thanks for this.