1. Nil, on November 26th, 2009 at 9:14 pm Said:

   Being stuck somewhere between east and west myself, part of both and none, and having travelled most of that road many times (long time ago…before my photographing days :-) ), this work kind of blends into my own life…

   So, a personal thanks… :-)

For the purpose of my latest project, I have been searching for the „in between” – whatever lies, geographically as well as culturally, between my world here in the midst of Europe and my long term focus of interest in the Middle and Near East.

From August to December 2008 I was „en route” between Vienna and Beirut. During my travel, I encountered people in versatile worlds, inside or in front of architectural places, both real and artificial, public and private. In my photographs, people emerge either as just passers-by or while waiting, as subjects and objects of the viewer’s eye, moving about in their urban or rural environment. These are distanced views in which locals and tourists are on their paths, randomly congregating and forming elusive compositions.

These pictures represent neither precise documents nor do they create artistic worlds. They rather mean to be constructions of multicolored, fragmented impressions, like looking through a kaleidoscope. I often show architectural monuments, including the social life taking place within, in various superimposed layers and conditions.

Through reflections and fragmentations within the images, the viewer’s eye is being multiplied, inverted and divided in order to put on trial and call in question the perception of cultural differences and their importance for the “present” and the “past” of our society. Photography as such turns out to serve as a visual hinge and an interface between these multi-faceted worlds where the space between East and West is either expanded or reduced. Where the West does end? Where does the Orient begin?