Hamburg

In a time of profound global upheaval, in which wars and social tensions shape everyday life for many, my focus turns to a place where peace often appears quiet and unspectacular: daily life in Hamburg.

The war in Ukraine and the terrorist attack in Israel on October 7, 2023 have not only accompanied me through media coverage – I have repeatedly portrayed survivors from Israel and Ukraine and listened closely to their accounts of traumatic experiences. These encounters have deeply shaped my awareness and altered my perception of reality.

Out of this direct confrontation with violence and trauma arose a need to create a counter-image – one that speaks not of destruction, but of the persistence of life. At the same time, the work became a personal, almost therapeutic process: a conscious attempt to respond to what I had witnessed and to regain an inner sense of balance.

My project “Hamburg,” which I began in 2023, is a deliberate turn toward the everyday as an expression of peace. It shows people in moments of lightness and normalcy: falling in love, flirting, playing, dancing, or skateboarding. These seemingly incidental scenes are not trivial; they are quiet testimonies of a fragile yet real sense of normality.

Working on this project was also a process of relearning. Despite my many years of experience as a documentary photographer, I had to learn again how to perceive the subtle, the playful, and the beauty of everyday life. In a world dominated by crises, this perspective became a form of resistance – and of self-reassurance.

“Hamburg” is a visual search for peace in the here and now: not as an abstract ideal, but as a lived reality found in small moments of human connection.