Statement

It’s tricky. It’s about views, glances, a certain gaze, assumptions that might or might not meet the facts. It’s about moments, movements, affairs and relations. For years I lived by night. It was as if it weren’t worth getting out the camera as long as it wasn’t dark. – And even when darkness finally falls, most subjects are too well lit when I find them. I’m looking for a story that hides in the dark. I imagine situations that aren’t real anymore or not yet. – No matter if they ever were or will be real. The problem with light is mostly to avoid it. With a little practice, I find a way. But the nights keep coming and going inevitably. I walk past a room, look around me – it is dark and it is crowded. Music at full volume. A beer at the bar, further down a group of men at the soccer table, behind it – kind of a backstage room, but it’s not worth the name, it’s just a room behind a door with a curtain, unlocked since all the keys got lost somehow. But it is clear at all times that doors are useless without people walking through, and that is what they do largely. There is no place to hide, no secret room, where you can arrange meetings for a portrait before or after the show. No more caves, no more silent moments. Everything happens in the middle of the public, every action is party action, everybody is rolling around, dancing, spoiling beer and vodka. Men are shouting to make themselves heard, people pushing forward, men who head for the urinal or for the toilets and the coke. Everything, every movement, even holding a camera in my hand and lifting it to the eye – it’s all in the middle of a performance. Everything seems to be amorphous, the lighting disintegrates the forms. I throw myself into the revolving darkness and as I point and shoot, I desperately wait to be struck.