Finally I have my bachelor degree!

My final project deals with german bureaucracy and I realised a photobook with the german title »Der Apparat« (english translation: The Apparatus).

The Apparatus focuses on a theme of our time and tells a story apart from sensations. Offices and institutions are in themselves barren boring places that evoke a feeling of unease and anxiety, when getting in touch with them.

It was clear from the outset that I didn’t want to reproduce the classic stereotypes when dealing with this subject. Full waiting rooms, long corridors and annoyed faces simply didn’t interest me in this story. These images are somehow already known too well. I was rather interested in the nature of the offices and institutions themselves. In the apparatus itself. I wanted to convey a mood and encourage the viewer to pause and reflect.

Documentary photography aims, different than the purely journalistic photography, not the capture of highlights of an event, but focuses more on casual, trivial or subtle image content.

I was not only interested in the typical offices and institutions, but I have also searched specifically for scenes beside. This is why I was not only in offices and administrative buildings but have also had a look at the former home of the former chancellors, have been underground in the mine Asse II, where the Federal Office for Radiation Protection investigates for solutions to the local problem of final disposal of nuclear waste and have been told that there is a kind of TÜV for plants (Federal Office of Plant Varieties). Also new to me was, that a chimney sweep is, as a single person, as well an institution for himself.

With my pictures I don’t want to force meanings or messages to the viewer, but rather to encourage in a subtle way to look critically at our society, to question structures and prescribed paths and to form an opinion about it by themselves.