The British dancer and choreographer Royston Maldoom exposes the idea of life as an ongoing, constant challenge.

„Don’t sit still, don’t except, move on, look for the next thing, look for the next moment. Don’t necessarily plan it but be ready for it, be open for it.“
(Interview in the movie „Rhythm is it“)

There are similarities to my approach to life as well as to street photography. In the same summer when I discovered street photography, I got – due to my own fault and personal circumstances – a “total eclipse of the heart” and saw my life and future pitch black. There seemed to be no way out and I realized, that I had to recalibrate a few things in my life to solve the problem. It took me months to get over it. I followed the suggestion: “Go creative!”

Color is it | Overdose | Berlin 2015

Life is in color (mostly), seeing is in color, actual cameras and smartphones capture fantastic colors. Why the hack do a huge amount of street photographers turn their photographs from color to black and white?

Olivier Ficco – strassenfotos.jimdo.com

Last month the French photographer and novelist-to-be Olivier Ficco did an interview with me about street photography on his blog. I had to answer twenty questions and it was “hard work” for me. Never before I had thought about street photography so intensively but I found my point of view. It was a pleasure for me and if you are interested in the results, follow the link to the interview.

One, Two, Three | Karlovy Vary 2016

The good thing is, it needs not much to do street photography: Open eyes, a camera of any kind, a step out of your apartment and you have your subjects and objects to shoot. Obviously everyone can do this. The bad thing is, everyone does it. Have a look at the social media platforms. Zillions of people are shooting strangers in public areas, labeling their pictures with “street photography” and tagging them with fancy phrases, because it’s “en vogue”. But very often the photographs look like a pure scan of reality – randomly, boring and irrelevant, pimped by post processing. No composition, no idea, no story is behind them. The output seems to be nothing more than digital noise in a community of wannabe-photographers. Maybe that’s why the New York-based Canadian writer and photographer Micheal Ernest Sweet pointed out last year: Street Photography Has No Clothes (referring to the fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”).