As a boy growing up in the '70s-'80s behind the iron curtain of the cold war - East Berlin - I would daydream of all the far away and mysterious places citizen of Eastern bloc countries were not allowed to visit. The longing for discovery was manifested in long hours and days spent with my postcard and coin collections from all corners of the globe, or reading books with stories about places I wished to visit.
This body of work is an attempt to reconstruct the visuals of my childhood daydreams when my mind started wandering, driven by a politically suppressed Wanderlust.
Today I am living in a far away place from home.
I live and work in South East Asia since more than 20 years now.
Certainly my curiosity for distant places and the willingness to explore to an extent of leaving home and actually live in those places has it’s roots in my childhood years.
With my story I am trying to encourage curiosity for the unknown, embrace the mystery of foreign territories.
‘Distant Place’ is not necessarily to be understood only in a literal sense but with a broader idea for an openness of mind and heart for all things outside of our own day-to-day world.
It could be a culture we know little or nothing about, a religion different from the one our parents taught us, a field of science that was not part of our curriculum or simply just the little strange looking restaurant down the road we have always been glancing at but never stepped in.
What started out many years ago as a photography project using polaroid film only, has transformed over time into a format using different techniques as well as incorporating objects that are part of my travel collection.
Wherever I go, far flung or just a weekend trip down the river, my eyes are always out to find those strange little souvenirs that have unknowingly grown into a vast collection of treasures and oddities.
At some point I started realizing that the reason for collecting these objects was exactly the same why I roam around and take photographs.
It became clear that I am simply trying to catch those childhood dreams of mine when the world seemed so far away and unreachable.