„Before turning into a photographer, I worked as a travel writer because writing is something I do well as it has to do with my inner urge to explore the world and express myself.

It all started when I interrupted my studies of Economics and Business Administration to help build a small travel agency specialized in expeditions and nature based tours in Venezuela. It was from there that I submitted my first article to a German travel trade magazine and it was on the riverbanks of the Rio Negro that I snapped my first pictures with a borrowed camera. I was 22 years old and the pictures turned out very bad.

Since the travel magazine I worked for as a correspondent demanded not only the written word but also photos to illustrate my articles, I bought a Canon EOS with an zoom lens a day before I went on my first official press trip to the Bahamas. This was 1990.

I was never good at doing two things at the same time and since my focus was writing it took a while before acceptable images materialized on film. Between 1990 and 1997 I was on journalistic assignment in 25 countries and published more than 1000 articles, most of them illustrated with my photos.

The snapshots were composed in a fraction of a second -- just good enough to be published with a limited expiration date of a day or a week. I stopped taking photos after changing from offline journalism to online producing to give it a break and slow down.

On a private trip through Burma in December 1999 I rediscovered photography. I am not sure what triggered me, the light, the people, the slow pace of travel or the spiritual mood that surrounded me as I moved among a 1000 year old Buddhist temples and shrines. The landscape I saw through my eyes reflected my inner landscape. I decided to re-invent myself and start to work as a visual artist.

A few days before my 3rd trip to Burma in December 2001 I switched from 35 mm to 6x6 medium format. It was my idea to concentrate on portraits of indigenous people, a theme which I indirectly worked on for years as journalist, reporting on ecotourism, the most sustainable approach in travel to benefit native people.

U Mya Lya, an astrologer in Mandalay, told me that I am “suitable with the female”. Hmm, I thought, this is an interesting statement from a man who doesn’t know me. This is when I decided to approach women with tattooed faces of an ethnic minority for a photo project – simply to proof his point.

The tribal women I met love to smoke the pipe. In my world, only men smoke the pipe and some young women have fashion tattoos but not on their faces. The image of pipe-smoking women with tattooed faces collides nicely with the beauty and fashion perceptions of western worlds. It was this collision which gave birth to my portrait work.”

September 2004