Start of the new series “Schwarz sehen”

Traveling through Japan with a black-and-white camera

Beds, Landscapes, Things

The German idiom “schwarzsehen” means “to see everything in a negative light” or “to see the dark side.” I’m using the term in a broader sense for my new series. It’s about the color black and its meaning. The starting point is the eye’s adaptation to darkness. If you turn off the light in a room, it takes 30 to 60 minutes for the eye to adjust to the darkness and begin to recognize individual objects again. I translate this physiological process into photographs: From a distance, they appear dark, almost black; upon closer inspection, spaces, landscapes, and objects suddenly come into view.

As a child, I was fascinated by how familiar things could become eerie or magically charged objects in the dark, and how shadows and gloom transformed the world. Yes, it was eerie, but also thrilling.
The Black Series consists of three thematic areas: photos of rumpled beds where someone has been dreaming; of places that look like dreamscapes; and of objects, animals, and insects that take on a life of their own at night.