1983 - 85
Photograms and Collages, on genuine photographic paper Ilfospeed glossy, 29 x 23,5 cm
"I got my first camera 1983, a Canon A1 (which I soon changed for a Nikon), when I started at Folkwang School. Initially I thought that I would draw and paint there. That was my passion. But every student had to do photography aswell as the photogaphers had to draw. That was the concept.
Photography touched me directly and for two years I spend most of the day in the school's well-equipped photo lab. It was so fascinating what one could do there, even just in the darkroom. I just finished high school in the same year, in April and I was a bit sad that I couldn't leave the town for some more exciting place. But then Essen was going to be interesting with all these funky students from allover. And the best was that everybody wanted to do art.
Prof. Inge Osswald (a former assistant of famous Otto Steinert) was a figure of great respect and wisdom to me, a woman somehow as asexual and objective as I imagined a female Moholy-Nagy. Through my art course in high school I was already very well educated in art history and very impressed by constructivism.
One day I did a series of photograms, with carefully prepared templates, which were inspired by Theo van Doesburg. All grey constructivism. She took them for her collection. I was honoured but still thought of all the work in the darkroom."
