I was born in 1968 in the southwest of Germany and grew up there. After my civilian service, I trained as a photographer in the early 1990s and was lucky enough to land, at my second position, with Jörg Robold in VS-Schwenningen. In all my years in this profession, I have never met another photographer with such a precise way of working. With him I learned the foundations of large-format photography and, just as importantly, how to work with light – a passion that has accompanied me ever since. I photographed cityscapes, landscapes and portraits of my friends with pinhole cameras. Slowly I found my visual language – and a subject that peu à peu began to take shape.

I studied photography at the FH Dortmund and at the College of Arts in Falmouth, England. During my studies I became deeply interested in the effects of artificial light, developing a lighting technique from which the Lightworks series grew – work that would later earn me international recognition and a number of awards.

For many years I have photographed on assignment for magazines and companies both at home and abroad, while working in parallel on personal projects that have led to book publications and long-form photo series.

The Lightworks series explore the traces we leave behind: abandoned towns (Ghost Towns), the disappearance of cultures and societies (Göbekli Tepe, British Abbeys, Greek Antiquity) – and the question of what these places mean to us today.

A further focus of my work is landscape photography. I am interested in how we shape and change the land, how we live with and within it – but equally, how landscape shapes and influences us. This perspective was recognised with a World Press Photo Award.

All my series are connected by one theme: traces. How people shape and change places – and what places do to people.

I have been a member of the photography agency laif for many years. Before that, my archive was represented by Bilderberg, until that once-successful agency quietly left the photography world. I am involved in the laif cooperative, a nominated member of the DFA and DGPh, a member of Freelens, and have taught photography students. I live in Stuttgart.

My way of working can perhaps best be summed up by a quote from the American photographer Lewis Hine, whom I greatly admire: “If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug a camera.” It sounds simple – and yet it goes to the heart of photography: that images show more than what the eye can see – and that life is more than what we think we see.