Born in 1951 I grew up in the northern rural “Oesling” area of Luxembourg . Early on, around fifteen I developed an interest in photography, mostly landscapes and nature, packing along a 35mm single lens reflex camera of the German brand “Edixa” and just one cheap zoom lens during my explorations of the surrounding woods and villages. Not even one year later I experienced a real enthusiasm and appreciation for photography after taking a basic black and white darkroom course in college and soon set up an own darkroom in the basement of our house and began experimenting with traditional black and white printings and with alternative, and somewhat archaic, printing methods and materials.
End of the Seventies my photography went in a new direction when I started to shoot more and more portraits, in the beginning also in black and white but quite soon I opted for color negative films and a little bit later for slides. The ten following years I principally took photos of my kids growing up.
During the last ten years I embarqued upon a series of trips to far-flung locations like Florida, Indonesia, Cuba, Vietnam, Argentina and Borneo, camera always in hand, which resulted in an ever growing library of slides and later of digital files, documenting my adventures. I also traveled extensively in European cities, Because of its important architectural European history there is a wide variety of scenery, resulting in unlimited possibilities for architectural and landscape photography. Small medieval villages, castle ruins, and large opulent cities, all make wonderful material for artistic photographs. So two of my great passions in life became travel and photography. I believe that travel broadens one’s view of the world. Experiencing other cultures, meeting people from other countries and seeing the beauty, and sometimes ugliness, has helped me understand that all of our lives are at once interconnected and individual and that experience made me an even much more tolerant person as result. Through my photography I seeked to document my own experiences, to capture scenes and events as I see them and to share with others the beauty and diversity of the world I’ve seen so far.
Five years ago another dream became true, when I got the opportunity to buy professional studio flash equipment for a few bugs. So immediately I set up a small photo studio at home and began seeking out young amateur models in pubs or on the street, I bought books and studied how to manage the studio light,learned to place my models in the correct position against neutral backgrounds, so that their skin shifts in and out of the background, giving them a special effect to their being. Very quickly I got fascinated with the ability to interpret human beauty through photography. The same model can look very different by varying the composition, lighting, clothing or background. Each image will have a different mood. I began experiencing in different techniques from portraits to fashion, lingerie, and glamour to nude photography. Nude photography is in fact a portrait, just of more intimacy, allowing direct expressions, without masks – both of the personality of the model as well as that of the photographer. In the context of beauty photography I agree with the French Photographer Jeanloup Sieff who said:” I do not believe in God, but the Woman is the proof of His existence.” Until beginning of 2006 more than 80 young charming women accepted to pose for me.
During all those years I was shooting as well with 35 mm as middle format cameras, but as soon as the digital technique seriously entered into competition with the analogue technique, I bought first the Canon EOS 10D digital body with a few lenses, a year ago another EOS 5D body and the necessary accessories and sold my complete analogue equipment. A longtime darkroom nut, these days I am most interested in the digital darkroom, enjoying working on my photographs in the daylight of my home office, instead of in the dark.I create my pictures first of all for myself. I invest them with all that I have in me; tenderness, fears, sensuality, humor and my dreams. I’m aware of the world that I create, a world that reflects like a mirror the being of man. This mirror I am offering the spectator with love and I hope that the vibrations arising from my pictures will strike waves also in him.
