Moi
For a long time the best way to describe me was as 'transient traveller of the world'. Originally from Berlin, I grew up in Kuwait during the 90s before moving to London at the tender age of 18. My roots were lose and no place felt like home but I was determined to find a home though it would be a long time before I could say that I succeeded in my mission.
On arrival in London I was overwhelmed with the flurry of lights, life, and advertising that rushed towards me. At night time in the privacy of my bedroom I would feel my head throbbing trying to compute all the information that had been crammed into it during the day in the form of billboards, flashing signs, people and tube maps. Coming from the desert it was the complete antidote to the rigid boring rut that I was used to. I had enrolled at Camberwell College of Art and Design to do a foundation course and find out what I wanted to study. It was a useless exercise and after living in a grey tower block outside Greenwich for six months and travelling through some of London's most deprived areas every morning on the bus, I was ready to throw in the towel.
Contrary to the overwhelmed enthusiasm expected of any young person moving to London, I only begrudgingly took to it. There is a saying that 'he who is tired of London, is tired of life' but I don't buy it. As far as I can see London is a vortex that sucks people in and makes them believe that they are part of something extraordinary, simply through its size and status. Having said that, I did not escape the whirlpool that is London, though in the early years I did move to Berlin twice for short periods of time to escape it.
On arrival in London I was overwhelmed with the flurry of lights, life, and advertising that rushed towards me. At night time in the privacy of my bedroom I would feel my head throbbing trying to compute all the information that had been crammed into it during the day in the form of billboards, flashing signs, people and tube maps. Coming from the desert it was the complete antidote to the rigid boring rut that I was used to. I had enrolled at Camberwell College of Art and Design to do a foundation course and find out what I wanted to study. It was a useless exercise and after living in a grey tower block outside Greenwich for six months and travelling through some of London's most deprived areas every morning on the bus, I was ready to throw in the towel.
Contrary to the overwhelmed enthusiasm expected of any young person moving to London, I only begrudgingly took to it. There is a saying that 'he who is tired of London, is tired of life' but I don't buy it. As far as I can see London is a vortex that sucks people in and makes them believe that they are part of something extraordinary, simply through its size and status. Having said that, I did not escape the whirlpool that is London, though in the early years I did move to Berlin twice for short periods of time to escape it.
In late 2006 I decided to draw a line underneath my London years and packed by bags once again to move to Cork before making my most recent move to Dublin in 2008.
The one constant that I have always had in life is the ability to look at other people and find the common ground between us. In a lot of ways this is the one thing I rely on to feel grounded and balanced and when that is not there it feels like the world is going mad around me. I think that commonality between people, no matter where they are is what I try to to bring out in my photos. People have sometimes said to me that places don't look the same as the real thing in my photos. They have said that they look like they could have been taken in some other place at some other time. Above all, what I try to capture is the honesty at the core of everything around us, be it through fleeting snapshot of an absent minded gaze or the stripped back simplicity of a land or cityscape.
The one constant that I have always had in life is the ability to look at other people and find the common ground between us. In a lot of ways this is the one thing I rely on to feel grounded and balanced and when that is not there it feels like the world is going mad around me. I think that commonality between people, no matter where they are is what I try to to bring out in my photos. People have sometimes said to me that places don't look the same as the real thing in my photos. They have said that they look like they could have been taken in some other place at some other time. Above all, what I try to capture is the honesty at the core of everything around us, be it through fleeting snapshot of an absent minded gaze or the stripped back simplicity of a land or cityscape.
