MEANING

I regularly get asked if I am still working on MEANING.
I am.

From time to time I have to bridge gaps that become as wide as the universe. Then I stop to think about what I am doing, which usually does not give me any usefull answers. There is a pattern in this experience: Like probably most of us, I do have a very specific image of myself and I often use this image to help me with my important decisions. This sometimes results in a nightmare in which I end up in some corner where I never wanted to go. Why? Because the image I have of myself seems to be pretty inacurate at times and it leads to the wrong decisions.

The gap between phantasy and reality amazes me. Not only in my own person but also in other people, in whole societies even …

This is what got me started with MEANING.

I began with this project a month after I seriously stumbled upon photography in 2008. There was a lot of turmoil in me in direct consequence of that. A world upside down. Very surprising really, to have your life concept shaken up by some event you considered “random” at first – a “simple”* photography workshop. Very disconcerting too. But totally fascinating at the same time!

And even though I actually found all my essential puzzle pieces that year, I still did not have the clarity of vision back then to finish this project. My sight was a bit muddy.

The last 2 years where full of experiment. Experiment with the medium and experiment with myself. Why was I so fascinated by this? What was it? Who was I? Different again from what I thought? Yes, different again.

So now I am putting the pieces together. I am sure it will not go straight. And I will be looking at some more corners before I am done with this. So be it.

That is just how it is with MEANING.

*Just to put that one right: I was no photographer back then and my point and shoot did not ask me to know anything about f-stops. I thought that a photography workshop in Tuscany would be a nice kind of holiday with some good talks at most – not unlike other workshops I had visited so far. How mistaken I was! And happily so! I had one of the best and most intensive times in my life. If it had not been this way, it would not have shaken me up as it did.