Sometimes a photo idea takes several years to mature before it can be realized. For years an old caravan stood on the side of the road on the edge of an industrial area about 500 meters from our house. The owner only moved it in the summer to go on vacation. I saw the caravan almost everyday when I ran past it during my running training. From Monday to Friday, he was surrounded by numerous parked cars; only on weekends could it happen that he stood there as an isolated object.

Regrettably, the background contained numerous distracting elements in normal weather. One idea was to photograph the caravan in foggy weather; a second idea came up when the maize began to grow, which obscured the background from a certain height. The first photo of the caravan was taken when the weather was bad, just to see how the caravan looked photographed. Only one day later, however, the sky looked friendly, and some clouds ultimately made the photo much more atmospheric. Exactly one week later it was possible to shoot the caravan under cloudless sky but in my opinion this photo is less atmospheric than the one with the clouds. So I decided to publish the one with the cloudy sky. One week later the maize field was harvested and therefore the project was finished.

Almost five years later, an interesting new situation arose by chance at this location. A small vehicle was parked alone, also on a weekend, next to one of the two trees that can be seen on the left and right of the photo with the caravan. I remembered a quote by Elliott Erwitt, “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” With this quote in mind, I ran home to get my camera. Back at the scene, I thought about how I could prevent the distracting elements in the background from being in the photo. I solved the problem by positioning the camera directly in front of my feet, a few centimeters above the asphalt of the road.

After retiring from my job, I began to create images with the help of self-written algorithms (programming language "processing"). Mainly randomly created simple shapes like circles, rectangles, or squares with randomly created colors. It was fascinating to see what the computer created; some images were very pleasing, but a lot were not.

The next step towards photography was to use photographs as a basis for deformation to create more or less abstract images. All kinds of manipulations were made, color changes, deformation of shapes and so on. The most interesting results were achieved using Benoit Mandelbrot's fractal algorithm. On the one hand, it was very interesting to observe the results, on the other hand, the process was very time-consuming. And in addition, the number of appealing images was very small.

Having learnt a lot of details about structures and colors by creating images through algorithms I thought that it could be interesting to search for similar structures in our environment (both nature and man-made) and show these without alienation. That was the beginning of my architecture photography.

Nevertheless, I continued with alienation in the abstract field, but on a different level. I reduced reality to the essential information so that the viewer of an image could immediately recognize what he was seeing, as a section of reality.

I can't say what I wanted from the beginning. It just evolved that way. I started with the algorithms and later worked in the field of architectural photography and abstract photography, as a "self-made" photographer without any formal training.

Later, some other photographic genres also aroused my interest, and I tried to gain experience in these genres, always having some quotes by famous photographers in mind:

• "Photograph the world as it is. Nothing’s more interesting than reality." - Mary Ellen Mark
• "What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce." - Karl Lagerfeld
• "If you see something that moves you, and then snap it, you keep a moment." -Linda McCartney

Well, there are quite a lot of photographers that come to my mind. Surprisingly, these photographers’ works are a little away from my own main photographic activities.

In the field of street photography: Vivian Maier.

Celebrity and fashion photographers: Lynn Goldsmith, Annie Leibovitz, Linda McCartney and Albert Watson. Concerning Albert Watson, he recently created some really breathtaking landscape photos of the Isle of Skye.

Another great name in the field of fashion photography: Paolo Roversi.

Furthermore I like the atmospheric photos by Sarah Moon and Lilian Bassman.

For some time now, I have been working on a project called, Mannequins behind shop windows.

I would like to continue this project, especially to create optical confusion by incorporating different layers into the photographs. The shop windows often show reflections in the panes that can be seen in addition to the shop's interior. This can lead to interesting overall impressions.

At some point I thought it could be very interesting to photograph "behind the scenes" of a film production. Or to photograph during the warm-up and cool-down of a Rolling Stones concert. It would be particularly interesting for me to photograph Mick Jagger, Keith Richards or Ron Wood after the concert, when they are no longer physically able to concentrate and offer the photographer the usual rehearsed behavior, but are, so to say, completely themselves.