I do not consider myself an artist.

That in itself is a useless statement, because when you ask three blokes on their definition of art, you probably get about 3.141 different answers. With me, it’s even worse – I don’t even have a personal definition! Only some foggy intuition that a piece of art should form a statement (intentional or not) and that this statement should be one part of a dialogue with the audience. (For the mathematically inclined, this is my necessary, but not sufficient criterion for art).

And I do not make statements. I make pretty pictures.

One time, I got a stuffed animal as a present. I don’t remember anymore by whom it was nor when exactly that happened. But it was quite a long time ago. It was bright orange and filled with beads (which is called “Perlsack” in German, a word I heartily recommend to any beginner in that language to practice on).

I called this creature “Alonso”.

Continue reading →

I recently stumbled upon this video and, well, had some strong opinions about it.

I got my first SLR camera in my early teens. I had things that were technically able to make photos before, but photography in my life really started with this Canon FTb. It was fully manual but had an integrated light meter. I read books about the basics: aperture, shutter speed, focal length etc. During the following years, I made a respectable amount of photos – and yes, they were exactly as terrible as you can imagine.

Continue reading →