It is us, your new neighbors!

Ten years ago, then Chancellor Angela Merkel proclaimed “We can do it” in the face of the so-called “refugee crisis”. Since then, Germany has seen a wave of nationalism, the government has collapsed, the far right gained a foothold in parliament and hatred towards refugees has reached new heights, fed in part by incoming people due to the war in Ukraine, the turmoil in the Middle East – the “crisis” is far from over. 
In the face of this German Bertelsmann Stiftung asked me to portray the lives of our new neighbors, refugees from Afghanistan to Ukraine, and find out about their fate in Germany. 
The portraits here are an excerpt of this my second book about refugees and they show the people I met in two situations: in the places that are important to them and in a mobile studio, where they presented themselves in the way they wanted to be photographed. 
The two ways of photographing the people show a tension between their everyday-reality and their own perception of who they want to be. The pictures embody a striking contrast, evoking a variety of feelings towards each person. And this is my aim: to show that those “new neighbors” are as human as it get’s, with hopes, dreams, fears and desires – just like anyone of us.