Creative Chronology

I was born in 1964 in Nuremberg, which is the second largest city in Bavaria, Germany, a city which had its first settlements in 850 A.C. The town gained fame for both, beauty and cruelty. While the Nazi regime held their party rallies during the II World War and the Allied Forces the Nuremberg Trials thereafter, the town was also known as a capital for trade and art during the Mediaeval and was a free imperial city within the Roman Empire. As a child I experienced both. The damage the war had caused in the old city was still visible in many places and at the same time I daily passed the beautiful restored buildings and churches while walking to school. For many years I commuted by train from the rural area I lived, to town where I went to school. The view of the emperors castle, the beauty of the churches many build in or before the 1400 ct, Albrecht Duerer, Martin Behaim ( who build the first globe), Peter Henlein ( who build the first pocket watch) Veit Stoss and many other medieval artist belong to what I call my heritage and for sure influenced me as an artist. 

My Mom was a tailor/ seamstress, as my grandmother from my father’s side and my father was a textile engineer. They met in school and build up their own clothing brand, fashion for middle age women, chic, elegant and timeless. My mom was the designer, helped at the pre-cut and wherever she was needed, my father did the sales part and everything else. The first 9 years of my live I grew up with my two sisters above the sewing room and cutting room, where samples for the collections were fabricated, which twice a year were shown at the various fashion shows nationally and internationally. When I wasn’t palying in the garden with my sisters, I spend the time in the sewing room, playing with textiles and yarn which I developed a love for in my early childhood. I always knew, I wanted to become a fashion designer myself. From age 15 till 27 I interned and helped in every vacation and free time at my parent’s company. In the first years mainly in the distribution center, putting boxes together, packing the cloths and putting shipping labels on. With age 16, I started helping out at fashion fairs in Duesseldorf and Munich, where my parents had an exhibiting booth. At the same time, I visited textile fairs with my mom in Paris and Italy. I started to get a good feeling for textiles, enjoyed the time traveling with my mom abroad and experiencing life in another country apart of holidays. I also loved the fact to learn about Italian and French cuisine. Cooking at that time developed in a big passion of mine.

In 1983 I left Nuremberg after I finished high school with a baccalaureate and a concentration in fine arts and French. At that time, I was inspired by the impressionist and expressionist painters, especially Paul Gaugin, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky and Vincent van Gogh.  I moved to Munich to start an apprenticeship as a seamstress. Despite the fact that I wanted to go straight away to Design School, my father insisted that I would learn first the basics of how to sew, as he was convinced that this was important for the design, so I was aware what was feasible in production and not. I started at ‘Stanner Kleiderfabrik’, an established company which was mainly fabricating silk dresses. As an apprentice I needed to learn everything from pre-cutting till the finished dress, including putting buttons on and zippers in skirts and dresses. After I finished my apprenticeship in January 1985, I first interned in a silk factory in Lyon (France) which since the 1500th century has been the heart of the European silk industry. I learned how to design patterns but also how to operate weaving machinery and hand stamping technics.

During that time, I also was discussing with my parents the best options for a design school. Because both my parents had been traveling extensive internationally for their work, they were convinced, that being successful in the fashion world, it was important to study abroad. We talked about the The Royal College of Art in London, Parsons school in NYC and the Istituto di Marangoni in Milan Italy. The brand of my parents, which carried the name of my mother (Brigitte Weiss Design), leaned to a classic design and used luxury fabrics, like linens and silks from Italy and France. There for I decided to go to Italy, which was known for being connected to all the designers I admired at that time, especially Giorgio Armani and Etro. I started in fall 1985 and lived for the next two years in Milan. During summer I had studied Italian in Tuscany and now fully emerged in the program. I had joined an intensive program, which was especially designed for foreigners and spent the whole day at school, studying and drawing my designs till late at night. I also learned how to cook and enjoyed spending the spare time outdoors at a warmer weather then I was used to from Germany. Milan being the center of the creative world during that time harbored many famous designers from fashion, industrial design, architecture and photography. It was inspiring for me to meet people across the different areas with some off them I became lifelong friends. The constant exchange between the different fields influenced my work but also pushed me to be better. Life was intense in every way during these years.

Since then I am drawn to minimal design and reduced colors because they elevate the look through the rather minimalistic design and let the material, the lines and the soft colors underline the structure, form and personality from subject or object.

While I already have been watching photographers on photo shoots for catalogs and marketing purposes at home when I was a child, it was during the time in Milan that I got fascinated with Irwing Penn’s classic fashion photography. It looked like a dreamy world to me - beautiful women, in beautiful dresses photographed in a classic, elegant way resulting in stunning beautiful photographs. Small doubts arouse and regrets if I had chosen the right profession. Esthetics had always been very important to me and let with a red line through my life. From admiration for the artists and art history from Nuremberg, the great painters from the early 20thcentury which inspired me, the craft I learned and embarked on, the small places I lived and made my home with old family pieces which I sanded by hand and repainted, the ceramic plates I started collecting when I lived in Italy, the cakes I baked, through the photographs I was watching in the magazines like Harpers Bazar and the Vogue. No week passed without looking at the newest editions. The photographs of Peter Lindbergh’s with Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista brought a new wave of beautiful inspiring photographs. While I dreamed of a big fashion career and applied for an internship at Armani, the news arrived that my parents had lost their company. The textile industry during that time was shaken by a big crisis and a change in demand by the consumer. There for my dream was over and I had to look for a job which created an income for myself instead of an internship with none. It was fall 1987.

I found a job as an assistant designer by another established company in Hamburg, A. Erlhoff, which employed and supported the designer Wolfgang Joop one of the big names in the German’s fashion industry during that time. Similar to my parents’ brand, the company manufactured an elegant and timeless woman’s brand, where luxury materials were used, and the design was minimalistic. Unfortunately, the company started to have financial problems as well and I lost my job during the same year being the youngest employee.

As I had an open lease for an apartment, I decided to stay and enrolled in a school where I learned to make patterns for the designs I did. At that point I had learned all the technics, from design to pattern making and sewing the final product. 

It was a night in summer 1988, when I was contacted by a headhunter who had heard about me. I was offered to go to India as a chief designer for a company which was based in NYC and owned by an Indian family from New Delhi, the brand name was Clotilde. The job was to design a whole collection consisting of roughly 150 pieces (manufactured * 10), supervising the manufacturing part in their factories in India, Hongkong and the New Territories till they were ready to ship for the trade shows in NYC, Asia and Europe. The friends of my parents were shocked that my parents did not intervene when I accepted the job. My parents trusted me and my common sense and, knew that I would grow as a person through the challenges I faced and put their worries aside. It was a dream job for a twenty-four-year-old woman, one which changed my life forever. Of course, I was naive to believe that I was up to the challenge. I had no idea what to expect but was excited for the new challenge as well for the money I earned. 

When I arrived in India in the middle of the night, I realized already at the airport how underdeveloped the country was. No lights outside, hundreds of people sleeping in the sand in front of the airport entrance, no tarred street and no cars, only small rickshaw to drop people off at their final destination, driving over dirt roads in the middle of the dark night at 3:00AM in the morning. Only later I learned, that most of the people slept in the sand in front of the airport to wait for the sun to rise and the regular traffic to start.

After my first week which I spent in a factory supervising 150 male sewers, I already knew what I was expecting for the time to come. No westerner had ever set foot in the company, very few I met in the small hotels I stayed. I never saw a woman, apart on the street while they were shopping or on the rare social occasions to which I was invited through the company. They all were Indians wrapped in beautiful Saris and looked like princesses reminding me of the fairy tales I had listened to as a child. The work was hard and lonely, but I learned more about fabrics, the technical details and was forced to grow up. Seldom I could call home during this time because the telephone connection was bad and calling expensive. After 8 weeks in New Delhi, I had my first trip to Hongkong where I stayed for the next two months. Another shock for me, because the city was the opposite of what I had just encountered. Still a British colony, the city was vibrating - lots of restaurants, shops, things to do in the free time and many young people from European and American Companies who were convinced they would change the world. I enjoyed Hongkong immensely, especially the beautiful scenery, the vibrance and the endless possibilities to explore the nearby islands. Everything reminded me at the movies ‘Love is a many splendored Thing’ and the ‘World of Suzie Wong’ which I had seen still in Germany. For nearly a year I commuted between India and Hongkong. I bought a small point and shoot camera before I left Germany and tried to capture the memories of the time for the future. The result was disappointing, and I have hardly looked at the photographs. Trying to get the best result in everything I did, the photographs did not keep up to the standard I put myself up to. When I returned to Germany, not only I felt like a world traveler but also appreciated much more where I came from and how I grew up. At the other side it was much more difficult to integrate culturally, as most of the people I knew could not relate to the experiences I had in both countries: one completely underdeveloped and the other one in middle of an economic explosion. 

In late summer 1989 after my return from Asia, I was offered a job as a designer in a clothing company in Munich, well paid, but not the quality I was used to. Three uneventful years followed, and I longed to go back to the place I have been so happy – Hongkong. In 1992 I got a new job offer to return, but this time things did not work out as well. 

After the crash of our family company, my parents had started again with designing and manufacturing their own label and selling directly to the consumer. Things went well, till my mother had an accident and needed immediate help. Because the company was based on my moms’ design and work it was in immediate danger of a new crisis. At the same time my new job was not as appealing as it looked at first and I decided to move back to Nuremberg and help out, a town where I thought I would never return to.

Only a couple of weeks after I had started my new job at the Coat Company, I found myself back home, living with my parents at first and then moving to a small place. I took over the company from my parents shortly after and suddenly was owner and designer, still with my parents aside. I met my future husband soon after my relocation, moved again and married in August 1993. In 1994 our first child a daughter was born, followed by a son only 11 month later and another daughter in 2000. Working full time with two little kids at home or in the sewing room, was stressful for everyone and advise arose I should quit my job and stay at home and support my husband who was traveling a lot as well. He came from an old, conservative family, the opposite from mine, who owned a hop business for the last 200 years. I was fighting the idea to be at home and a housewife and suddenly saw everything I dreamed of in my life vanishing.

It was in 2001 when I finally had to give up my work. Two days I will remember forever, one being the first day of school from my oldest daughter Lara, it was September 11th, 2001. I just got home from dropping her off, when I was called from my husband to put on the TV. At this time his whole family lived in Washington DC, where they moved in the early 70th, a city he also had spent half of his life. The US seamed far away, everything unreal on the TV screen and still it affected me, because my parents in law, as well his brother with family lived there. More members of the family lived in NYC. The second day I remember was only 6 weeks later, when Lara’s teacher called us and told us she needed to leave the school immediately. She expected severe learning disabilities. The German school system was not equipped to these children, the only option was a school for “Mental Retarded Children” (the cruel and discriminating name during that time) which I did not accept. The teacher had recommended us to try everything possible, because she as well thought that this was not an option. 

The next two years I only remember as a blur; mainly in the car, driving Lara from Therapist to Therapist while caring for my other two children, one of them being just born, trying to be a perfect housewife, caring daughter while trying to forget that I just had given up what I loved most – to work.

While I have looked at the fashion world different in the recent years and after my time in India, questioning the sense, and struggling with the glamorous surface it came with, I still missed to work. My life felt empty and I felt useless, degraded to a functioning machine, with all my creativity buried. I even forgot I had ever done a serious job. Remembering the beautiful photographs, I had seen one time in the magazines, I had asked my father to lend me his analog Olympus camera to take on vacation with my children. I had no idea how to adjust the shutter, aperture or ISO. I received a quick introduction how to work the camera and departed with many rolls of film and my children to Italy. When I returned, I was surprised by the result and especially liked the black and white portraits I took. The camera returned to my father and I forgot about it. It was a year later in late 2002 when my twin sister advised me to explore the field of photography. She saw something I hadn’t seen before, the relationship between my previous work, the art education, and Photography, and knew that without purpose and something to do, I would fall in a severe personal crisis. 

At Christmas 2003 my husband gave me my first serious camera, a Minolta Dynax 3000. I used it for the first time when I was able to join him on a work trip to China, Thailand and Burma in January of 2004. I took many rolls of slide and 35mm film. When I returned and looked at the prints, I was positive surprised by the result and knew that I discovered a new passion. As well I was aware, that I had to learn a lot to master the craft. During spring of the same year, I got in touch with a friend who is an industrial photographer and already used a digital camera. He recommended me to buy one myself, if I was serious with photography and wanted to make a living.  I was disappointed, because I just had started using my new analog camera but took his advice and bought a Nikon D100. I was overwhelmed by the technical difficulties of the camera side as well with the computer. In my spare free time I started taking photographs, especially from my family and during vacation and learned as much as I could about the camera but as well of the photoshop program I used.

While the school situation with our daughter got more desperate with the time, we knew we had to look for another solution if we wanted to give her the possibility of a serious education. From the time my husband lived in Washington DC, he knew about a school in special education with a focus on Dyslexia. Lara had spent a summer camp in 2003 at LAB school and showed more improvements than in the 2 school years before. This was the point, I suggested to move with the 3 children to DC for a limited time of 1-2 years and enroll Lara at Lab School for her 4thgrade school year.  My husband could not join us, because he was needed in the company in Nuremberg. He agreed and we decided to enroll Lara for the fall semester 2004. 

Knowing that a new chapter in my life would start, I researched schools in the DC area which offered a program in Fine Art Photography. I found the Corcoran College of Art and Design, applied and started classes at the same time my children started with their school in September 2004, only a couple of days after we arrived in the US.

My first semester teacher was Joe Cameron, who was a master in black and white photography. He was patient and supported me from the beginning. He taught me that unlike in Germany there wasn’t a rule for creativity, but rather a freedom in expression and pushed me to explore the medium. It was an analog class and I was happy to use my Minolta again. The first day he sent us out with several rolls of 35mm film and asked to bring them back at the end of the week. No special assignment. Shoot whatever you like he said. I was shy and only photographed family and stills. In the next week I developed my first rolls of black and white film (Tri-x400) and made my first prints in the schools’ darkroom. After 3 weeks, I already was so fascinated by the printing process, that I rented a small darkroom space in an Art Collective in Georgetown DC, only a couple of blocks up the street from where I lived. For the following two years I spent every free minute in the darkroom, mostly at night when the kids where at bed. When it got too difficult to juggle the children, schools, driving, my own education and the rented space, I decided to build a small darkroom in my basement. 

In the first year at Corcoran I met Muriel Husburn and Andy Grundberg, who were professors of me in several classes. They too supported me and helped me finding my own voice. The first class I took with Muriel was named ‘Identity and Place’. It was the class which in retrospective effected my work most. Never before I had thoughts about my identity nor the place I grew up. Having moved over the ocean to the US, speaking another language often with my children, living in another cultural society, I often thought back about the class and Muriel’s’ own work, which dealt with her past growing up in El Salvador. I suddenly faced the same questions. Where is my home? Where do I belong to? Today I know that my identity is influenced by multiple things, my life in Germany and the time I have spent here in the US, but at the same time by all the places I have lived over the years and by all the people I have met since my studies in Milan. Since 2017 I am dual citizen, German and American.

During the third semester at the Corcoran in fall of 2005, I started a project, dealing with sleep and dreams. I loved the intimate and peaceful moments I worked in, but as well the shadows of the darkness and the contrast of the little light I used. I only used the light which was avaible in the room I was working in. I was attracted by the soft light and lines which disappeared in the dark and the peace and quietness of the moments. It was only myself and my camera and the object or person I would photograph, asleep. The series was positive received in class and I was urged to continue with the project. As a result of this project, I never worked with a flash in my whole career and always look for natural light or small light sources available. Throughout the year, I worked with family and friends, but as well with some strangers I met during a private workshop with Andrea Modica in January of 2006. I asked her if she would work with me, after my dark room professor Margret Adams advised me to enroll in one of her workshops in Maine because she knew that I loved the printing process. I liked Andrea’s work a lot and was interested to learn the process of platinum printing which she used for much of her work. Because I could not join her during her class in Maine, I contacted her, and she agreed to work with me privately at her home. 

I spent one week with her, photographing a six-year old deaf-mute child, a girl she knew. She taught me how to use a large format camera, introduced me to the process of platinum process printing and advise me how to improve my work. She looked at photographs I had done over the first year and a half and was the first person who ever edited some of my photographs. During that week, I met Steven Stinehour from a small press in Vermont, with whom I worked on a small booklet which he printed a year later in 2007. It was called Mesoamerica, a collection of photographs I took during the upcoming summer.

During the same semester I learned about the different camera formats and was intrigued by the classic square format of a Medium Format Camera. I borrowed a Hasselblad c501 at the local Photography store and used it for a whole week without any introduction. I suddenly loved the experience to work with the camera, the sound the shutter made, the ankle I looked through the viewfinder and especially that I found myself more isolated from the subject, when I was using a 35 mm camera. When I developed the film, I even was more excited of the results. I bought a camera shortly after and started working most of the time in Medium Format with the classic KodakTri-x 400 film.

In Andy Grundbergs’ class ‘Photography Now’, we visited many photo exhibitions in the Smithsonian and the Natural Gallery of Art, and I was first time exposed to see real prints from great photographers. I can remember a retrospective of Irwin Penn. I loved the beautiful prints and classic photographs, the warms of the blacks, the depths and the intimacy of the images. Another exhibition I remember was ‘the Americans’ of Robert Frank which absolutely fascinated me, also the books which had a selection of his negatives and showed his editing and cropping process for his book. I started visiting galleries and shows myself and went to some photo festivals in the area especially Look3 which was close by. I enjoyed classic b&w photography which captured intimate moments and portraits, but also looked for the quality and technics of the prints. Sally Mann’s’ work of ‘the Deep South’ was a series which captivated me as well. The prints were stunning and the photographs beautiful, telling a romantic story about her life, family and the land she lived on. I started looking and collecting photography books, mainly black and white, everything but conceptual. Several years later, I had the possibility to meet Sebastian Salgado when he presented his project Genesis. I was intrigued by his story, but of course in the same way by the project and his photographs. The humanity in his photographs made me stop and sit in front of some of the images for a long time. Some of the portraits reminded me at the ones I had seen from Irwin Penn years earlier. I saw the exhibition Genesis four times, in different locations. 

I could not relate at all to the latest movement of the Düsseldorf Schule. Honoring the quality of their work, it was far to conceptual and reminded me of my time and education in Germany, where everything had to follow a rule, an order or concept. 

In summer of 2006 and two years into my studies at the Corcoran I decided to go on a road trip to photograph and apply what I had learned. In general, I was only able to travel when my children were in Germany visiting family, or when their father came to visit and stayed with them. We were separated since 2005 due to our family set-up, the distance and lack of time we could spend together. It was hard on me, because I have left my own family, siblings, parents and friends back in Germany and had to fully build up a new life for myself and the children. Acknowledging the crisis, I was in, I wanted to go far away, to a place which was new to me, but also inspired me to start a new chapter. Nicaragua was a country I wanted to go since a long time. Still in Germany, I read many books of Latin American writers. The books of Gabriel Marquez, Isabel Allende and Giaconda Belli I enjoyed especially. Giaconda’s’ books and poetry telling stories about her life in Nicaragua were especially beautiful and inspiring. A good friend knew Nicaragua, because he was stationed there during the Contra war in the 80’th and told me a lot about it. Someone else I knew from Washington was a diplomat from Bolivia, who just had started as the chief of Mission for the Carter Center to oversee the upcoming election in Managua. I already had made up my mind to go to Central America and drive though all the countries, before I knew that someone else would be there. But it gave some comfort to know in case of an emergency. I bought maps and all the books I could find and departed for a two month trip the day my children left for Germany for the summer. The only two contacts I had before I left, I received from a Jesuit friend in Germany.  He connected me to a Non-Profit organization in Barrio El Recreo, Managua the capital of Nicaragua and to Iger in Guatemala, another NGO, who transmitted education and schooling over radiofrequency. It was an amazing program.

But first I flew to Costa Rica and there rented a car at a Hertz station. I had to sign a waiver that I was fully liable for the car, being damaged or stolen and for my own life because of the danger on the streets and specially at the border crossings. I carried two bag packs, one with my camera equipment and one with a sleeping back, Mosquito net, few cloths, a diary, a small speaker for music, a satellite phone I had rented for the trip and over 100 rolls of 35 mm film, as well around 50 rolls of 6*6 film. Only black and white. My professor Joe Cameron recommended me not to photograph in color, as he thought I had a better eye for B&W. During the two months which I started in San Jose, Costa Rica, I passed 4 borders, from Costa Rica to Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and finally Guatemala from where I returned to DC. In Nicaragua I photographed during the Election of Ortega and observed firsthand the tense atmosphere throughout the community. I briefly connected with the diplomat I knew from DC whom later I got married to. He was born and raised in South America. I drove many miles passing mountain and volcanos, crossed dried out riverbeds and wild streams, hiked small trails in the mountains and walked through blistering sun, stayed at a coffee plantation in Nicaragua, and experienced a tropic cyclone, fearing for my life. It was the happiest time I had since years and felt free and strong, proud of myself and independent. I was alone but did not feel lonely. During the long car rides, I listened over and over again to the same tapes of Aretha Franklin, while in between I stopped in small communities to fill up gas, eat or find a place to stay. Most of the people I met, were happy and surprised that a lonely sole appeared out of the nowhere. Many of them had never seen a foreigner. Strangers invited me in their homes and shared stories and the food they had. Without a real plan I let myself drift from day to day and connected with people and NGOs I encountered during the travels. All of them I sent photographs when I was back, partly through, some by email. Many of them never had heard of a computer, nor did they have power where they lived.

Before I left in June, I had sent a print to Maine photographic workshops. When I returned from my trip, I received the note that I was the winner of Golden Light Award.

Back in Washington D.C. I developed all my film and started printing small 8*10 images which I showed to my teachers. In retrospective my first edit was terrible. I did not know what I was looking for and hoped that my teachers would guide me. But this did not happen, luckily… I learned that much later. Develop your own voice is the most important thing I learned, the opposite of how I grew up in Germany. Of course, they showed me their favorite images, but I knew I had to go back and photograph more, much more. That was also the advice I was given by everyone and ‘continue and you’ll see what you find’.

Muriel had asked me, if I wanted to join her for a workshop in Salvador in spring 2007, but I already had committed to another visit in Salvador. I told her I would join later during the week. Before that, I went to the South of the country to work with a family I had gotten in touch from DC. Muriel had just started a program with her students to go to Salvador to work and connect with a group of local students. It was her country and she was a great teacher. 
It was an exciting week in which I learned a lot about the culture and the land, and my interest grew to learn more about Latin America. During that week, I already knew that I would return and explore more of South and Central America.

Later that year in November 2007 after I had left the Corcoran, I decided to continue my education and joined a workshop in Cambodia led by Gary Knight, a founding member of VII Agency. My professor Margret Adams urged me to do so. I picked Cambodia, because I had visited it before during my previous career in the late 90th where the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge (Pol Pot Regime) was still visible. I enjoyed the workshop a lot, especially connecting with other photographers. During that week, I produced my first digital photo story about sex workers in Angkor Wat. To shoot digital was a requirement for this workshop. I met many interesting people, as the workshop was during the Angkor Photo Festival. This was the start of many workshops I took with VII Agency. Most of them to learn from the photographers who led the workshop and to get feedback about my own work, but also to meet fellow photographers and look at other work.

The following year I continued to travel and photograph in the Latin America. Between 2008 and 2010 I went to Colombia and multiple times to Bolivia were my son went to the American school for a semester. I also went twice to Brazil. I stayed with a friend of mine from Germany who was married in Rio de Janeiro. During the days, I photographed in the Favela Pavao de Cantagalo in Rio de Janeiro, which I entered with the help of a non-profit which I contacted while I still was in DC and in the evening, I was working with the local community.

In January 2008, we had a group exhibition called ‘Fotoviajeros’, an exhibition about International Experience/ Transnational Identity at the Gallery 31 of the Corcoran in Washington DC. Every student who joined Muriel’s workshop El Salvador was invited to show the work of the week. I had a whole wall for my work and the first real exhibition. We installed it ourselves and with the help of Susan Sterner another professor who joined the workshop. It was a great space and many people came to the opening. After a couple of weeks, Muriel put me in touch with a writer from WOLA (Washington Office of Latin America) who was a friend of hers but also inquired about my work. He purchased two prints, the first I ever sold, but also invited me to have a solo exhibition at their office in Washington DC. They also used a photograph for their annual report. Because WOLA had relationship with the Human Rights Archive at the Rubinstein Library at Duke University, it happened that my prints drew attention to the ‘then’ director of the Special Collection and Rare books Library and Rubinstein Gallery, Karen Glynn. She contacted me and visited me with the new human rights archivist Patrick Stawski at my house in DC. They spent the whole day with me, looked at prints and the darkroom and talked a lot about the Library and what it meant to be included in the collection. Before they left, they invited me to be part of the Archive at the Rubinstein Gallery, which now has archived over 300 prints of my work.

It was in November of 2009, when I went the first time to Haiti. I was visiting the Dominican Republic with my son, when I decided it was much more interesting for him (and myself) to see the other side of the island and drove spontaneously to Haiti. We rented a car and visited small villages, drove over land and stayed in Port-au-Prince at hotel Montana, which collapsed 6 weeks later during the earthquake in January 2010 and buried more than 200 people. During this week I met with a friend who worked for the UN mission in Haiti. He let me join a meeting with community leaders from Martissant with whom I am still in touch today. Back in Washington, I decided to go back 2 weeks after the earthquake hit. It was one of several visits in Haiti (2009/2010/2011/2012), which I spent mostly in Martissant, a communal section of Port-au-Prince which concentrates at least a quarter of the inhabitants of the capital and is strongly stigmatized, with largely forgotten public service and severe violence of armed gangs. Of all the Non-profits working in Port-au-Prince, hardly any of them was working in Martissant. Neither the UN, nor any bigger organization was allowed to even enter the community because of the violence. Later on, I was invited to show my work from Haiti at the OAS (Organization of America States) in collaboration with the Human Rights Archive from Duke University (Al Margen 2011), at Duke University in the Rubinstein and Friedl Gallery (Al Margen 2011) and at the Haitian Heritage Museum in Miami (Shaken 2010). I also was invited to speak and be part of a panel discussion at Rubinstein Library.

In fall 2009/2010, I joined my second and third workshop with VII agency in Chernobyl led by Antonin Kratochvil. The 25th anniversary of the nuclear disaster at reactor 4 was coming up, which happened during the time I studied in Milan. Everyone experienced the consequences of the disaster in Europe, Germany and norther Italy quite hard because it was not too far away. Another reason I wanted to go was that my maternal grandfather was stationed in Ukraine during the II World War.

In Washington I continued my travels to Latin America and went in spring of 2010 on a long trip to Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Paraguay. I spent 2 weeks in Conception, Chile after the Earthquake and the Tsunami hit the area. My husband joined me during that time, he was writing for political news outlets and publications for the government, while I was photographing. He saw something in my photographs which correlated with his writing and encouraged me to continue. Nevertheless, our marriage did not last very long and in early 2013 we got divorced.

Between 2012 and 2016 I I have been visiting Peru, where my twin sister lived in the high Andes working for the GIZ (the German Corporation) and my son in Colombia, who studied in Bogota for one and a half years. One of the trips I extended to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.

In fall of 2013 and following a visit to Mexico, I decided to go to Arizona and start a new project at the border area. It seemed to me natural, coming from Germany, which was divided by a wall for nearly half of my life. I wanted to see how a wall was implemented here in the US and how border crossing worked from both sides. I booked a flight and a car and drove down to Nogales in Arizona and stayed at a place I had rented for two weeks. Through a coincidence I met Bob Philipps who just started a Non-Profit on the US side called Border Community Alliance. He asked me to join him during the whole time I stayed and already on the first day took me to the Mexican side and introduced me to AlmaYamez from FESAC and Hilda and Paco from The Juan Bosco Shelter in Nogales/ Mexico. During the first visit I met many people from the different organizations but also migrants who were just deported. I shot on both sides of the border, in shelters and in the desert. Still, when I looked at the images, I wasn’t sure if this was what I was looking for. I had seen many images of the border with migrants on trains and busses but was looking for something else. I returned and returned till one moment, when I decided to start working with the migrants in the shelter after their deportation from the US. At that time people already knew my face, because I had been there many times and were open to work with me. It was an experiment, completely conceptual, the opposite of how I am generally working. I photographed all the migrants in a dim lit room at a wall, alone - only the face. I wanted the focus on the face, not distracted by other things, photographed in the same way, as everyone had the same goal and the same destination, the US – it did not matter where they came from, because all the stories were similar, likewise horrifying and sad to listen to. In the first years the shelter was mostly filled with men. During my last visit which was in September 2019 I saw for the first-time many children and women. Initially I interviewed the migrants myself, later on Alma helped me, because shooting and interviewing and translating was too difficult for me alone, as the time frame I was able to work was always short. Migrants were only allowed to enter the shelter after 4:00 PM, there were strict rules of dinner, cleaning and setting the small space up so everyone found a space to sleep. Women and men in two different rooms. Seldom enough space for everyone. But Hilda made it always work. I used a Leica Monochrome 35mm for the whole project which I bought in 2014.

During a book binding workshop, which I joined in Italy in 2016 with Teun van der Heijden, I put the images together in a book dummy and sent it to several outlets including the Month of Photography in LA. It was selected as one of the books and was exhibited. A month later, I was contacted by David Schonauer, who saw the book in LA and wanted to write about it in the Huffington Post. This was an amazing opportunity for me. At the same time, I already was invited to show the Backpackers at the Biennale in Venice with ECC European Cultural Center, at the Rubinstein Gallery at Duke University and later on in Medellin Colombia, where I was invited to teach a workshop at the Centro Colombo American and work for two weeks with a group of photography students from an Art College. I had met Alejandro Vasquez Salinas who run the Centro at Fotofest in Houston 2016. At the end of the two weeks, we had a joined exhibition. I helped installing their work, while my work was hung and installed by the Center. It was a series of pictures from the Backpackers. I also had an artist talk at the museum of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia.

During 2017 the Backpackers were featured in ‘lensculture’, ‘lenscratch’ and later on I received the CENTERS- project-launch-jurors-choice-award in Santa Fe where I was able to present my project in front of a big audience. I also received the Beth Block Award from HCP and was able to exhibit the Backpackers during the 34th Juried Exhibition at HCP.

Over the years I also continued participating in workshops with Ron Haviv and Anders Peterson. Despite being very different photographers, I enjoyed working with both, therefore I also joined them repeating. Ron Haviv urged me to build up my social media presence and get my work out. He told me’ if you don’t put it out, nobody will know about it’ he also told me to look at my work more positive and continue working. I had no self-confidence at all and was very insecure about my own work. Anders Peterson as well told me to continue and not leave the path I was on. It was very hard to combine my work, with my family set up, my children and my parents. From 2008-2015, my father was battling Multiple Myeloma (a bone marrow cancer) and spent half of the time in the hospital. During all the years I flew every 6 weeks to Germany to be with him, sometimes every month, one time I stayed nearly half a year. It was a struggle to leave the children alone and organize my life and sometimes I was thinking to give up photography. Ron and Anders both told me not to. The cancer of my father was a reason too, that I joined all the workshops. These were the rare weeks I had for myself and the work I loved and time to recover and reboot. 

Since my start at the Corcoran in 2004, I have switched from film to digital in 2014/2015 and from the darkroom to digital printing shortly after. After I had several rolls od 6*6 Tri-x film opened at the airport security in India and Ukraine and other film damaged through x-rays at the airports, I bought the Leica Monochrome 35mm which I use since then. In 2016 I bought a digital back for the Hasselblad.  When I moved from the house in Washington to Virginia near the Shenandoah Valley in 2014, I also had to give up my darkroom because I do not have city water where I live, but get my water from a well. It would have been irresponsible to drain the chemicals in the ground and too expensive to build a tank for it. This was very sad for me, because I really loved the manual aspect of working in the darkroom. Nevertheless, I also had developed severe respiratory problems due to the poor ventilation I had in my darkroom and the endless hours I spent printing. There for I was advised by my physician to give it up anyway. 

After writing and reading these pages again, I can imagine how it must feel for someone else. But in retrospect it was exactly how it feels, chaotic and overwhelming – often I was asked how I managed my life and could live the way I did. I never had nor took a break and still don’t know what it means to sit still or do nothing. These days during Corona are the first since I went to India in 1988, where I feel I do exactly that.

Today I am thinking back at the moment I met Andy Grundberg in his office and showed him my work. This was during the first semester. 

He asked me:

You have three children, and you want to start a photography career???? How do you plan to that???? Might be you think about something else.

We became close friends and I am very thankful for what he and his wife Merry Foresta did for me. They always had time for advice and picked me up when I struggled, wondering if I should have listened to his advice.

Over the years, I never captured oral history, a part of one time when I photographed after Hurricane Sandy. Unfortunately, this got lost. I also hardly write. I feel that recording, video or writing is distracting myself from taking pictures. After writing this down, I consider writing some thoughts down during my future projects, as it definitely helps to keep the memory alive.