Portrait nominee

This series is based on the life of romantic italian poet Giacomo Leopardi. His life was one of melancholy, longing for beauty and an suffering from love. He was highly intellectual from a young age. But his tormented spirit made him an introvert and shy human being.

‘With my pictures and sculptures I seek for the beauty in the tragical, in pain.’

I worked for 20 years as a director and set designer at the theater. But more and more, photography, which I initially regarded as a sideline, invaded my professional path. I discovered how my experience within the theater influenced the language of my photography and experienced a sense of “back to basics”, of re-sourcing. In order to be able to clarify this more, I decided to leave the black box in 2017 and tell my story on the basis of photos and sculptures. My photos are often staged and focus on physicality, emotion or expression. They look for a physical and psychological vulnerability. My sculptures are a study of damage, both in the use of matter and in the expression of an emotionality. The broken, the damaged, the unfinished and confused are represented in different ways through heads and bodies. Yet there is always a “sparkle”, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally, perceptible.

I create the whole image as photographer, stylist and set designer.