Photography began to intrigue me already at the age of nine, and up until my camera was destroyed at a labour-day demonstration in Hamburg in 1969, I was convinced I wanted to become a photo-journalist. Deeply impressed by the turbulences of that era, I found stability in landscapes, which could be caught with large format cameras on a tripod. Wild and pristine landscapes, however, only existed in my mind and books – where I was living in, landscape mostly reflected its extensive (ab)use by humans.
From then on, signs of human presence within landscape became my subject, eventually preparing me to photograph architecture and starting my own business in 1980. Few people were photographing landscape and architecture with large-format cameras back then, and landscape was nearly non-existent in advertising and the commercial use of pictures. But having exhibited my work in a couple of galleries and magazines, I was confident enough to apply for jobs in advertising and media more broadly. Fortunately, I was indeed booked for my particular view on things, especially architecture, which gave me substantial freedom to further experiment with capturing the interaction between people and their surroundings through photography.