In 2019, I left my hometown of Cologne (Germany) to live in Brisbane (Australia). I started building a new home for myself in this unfamiliar place. 

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A year in, I began taking portraits of my newfound friends and family. The project started out as an exercise, a simple task I had set for myself to keep using my large format camera. Inspired by Thomas Struth’s family portraits, I asked to enter people’s homes. Together, we would decide where to take the photograph. The only instruction I gave to my sitters was not to smile. 

Working with a large format camera requires concentration and patience, both on my part and that of the subjects. Possibly due to the awkwardness of the process, the resulting images reveal vulnerability and tenderness.

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“The question of the family was precipitated largely through an attempt to analyse and understand my own family, my family’s history and myself within this context. Your own family is not something you have a choice about. The family was a very charged issue in the Germany I grew up in.”
Thomas Struth

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I can strongly identify with Struth’s statement. My parents were of the German second world war/post-war era and  family has always been a complex and difficult concept for me. Wihtout consciously setting the intention to do so, the topic of family is a common thread in my body of work. 

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In the past, I have made work about my relationship with my father (Something to do with my Father); created a photographic interpretation of the classic family novel, Anna Karenina (And where love ends, hate begins); and observed the strength people can draw from their families in times of crisis (The Rhythm of Small Things).

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Family is the smallest societal unit and the integral building block on which wider society is built. Our family defines us, even in their absence.