Everyday Imbalance

Photography is supposed to change with time and my photography has also changed within the last year. For at least a decade, I have always carried a camera with me and documented my everyday life and my surroundings. I like to take photos in public spaces, discover things, look for connections or contradictions. In the personal environment, I keep documenting the life of my family, where we are, what we do, what I see in it. For me, those two types of photography have always been different, however, during the last months this dogma has slowly but steadily dissolved.

I could summarize my pictures under the heading what I like or what attracts my attention. This has mainly been my family in the last year. I have never spent so much time documenting our everyday life and our being together. For me, my family became a symbol of nature and culture in the difficult times of a global pandemic.

Human beings are the product of nature and everything they create is culture. When the pandemic started, nature threatened part of their own existence. We usually try to avoid illnesses and fear associated disabilities, however, in natural science a global pandemic is just a pattern of evolution. The intelligence of humans and their culture makes it possible to defend oneself against it. This something extraordinary and part of our identity despite all injusticies and failures which accompanied the fight against the pandemic.

The relationship between nature and culture has many facets. On the one hand it is a kind of symbiosis due to our origins, on the other hand it also represents a permanent conflict that leads to constant change. Nature changes and humans adapt (or vice versa). Humans protect themselves, question, look for solutions, change their life. A lot has changed for me, for us, during this time, but I kept taking pictures.

During this time, my feelings and impressions were more uncertain than before and this became part of my observations and images. Some routines and rules were maintained, but a kind of everyday imbalance developed between the past, the present and our uncertain future. This feeling revolved around concepts such as stagnation and progress, individuality and community, necessity and abundance, closeness and distance, dream and reality, longing and disappointment, life and death.