• The ongoing decade is connected with far-reaching changes in European history. The number of refugees and migrants who are arriving in Europe right now is greater than ever. As a part of this photographic project, I have chosen the task of recording this historic moment, transfer it into appropriate and dignified imagery and fixate it for our posterity.
• Because of my biographic proximity to the topic of migration, it is a special concern for me to deal with the differences of (e)migration and travel (which is inherent from the Latin verb “migrare”) and the positive tension between European history and the aesthetics of landscape and portrait photography and to question and visualize it repeatedly in my new series “Fremd bin ich eingezogen” (“I came as a stranger”).
• I document the incoming refugees in Salzkammergut (Austria) in the moment when they still live in refugee camps, with no residence permit or status, without knowledge of what will happen to them. When they have a long way behind, but also ahead of them. In the moment of very strong emotions: the hope of being accepted, the fear of not being accepted, and the discovery of the “new world” but also the longing for home. The work process originated from joint trips and excursions to the natural sceneries that we remember from European painting of the 19th Century (Romanticism). Salzkammergut was chosen as “ideal European Landscape” by famous artists of romantic era, like Ferdinand Olivier, C. P. Fohr, J. V. H. Schnorr, Heinrich Reinhold, Karl Schinkel. As the name of the project I have chosen several lines of Franz Schubert's song cycle “Winterreise” (“Winter Voyage”) from the year 1824.
• In addition, I have worked on the tension-filled relationship between the perception of the viewer and the protagonist of the picture in the series. The “foreign” has always fascinated us and indeed has a repulsive because frightening potency. Does that apply equally to both parties, the spectator and the portrayed person? What are the possible (learned) patterns and structures, up to the viewing habits, that play a major role both for the Occidentally influenced viewer as well as the refugee?
