A glimpse into the soul

For the past eight years, I've been photographing the Nauticlegends series in cooperation with Wave Magazine. 

As the shoots rarely take place in my studio – mostly on the road, in changing locations – I travel with my mobile studio to each destination. The only constants are the black background and the lighting. 

The focus is clearly on people’s faces. The subjects are all personalities who have made it as athletes or as entrepreneurs in the nautical field, or for whom the element of water plays a major role in life. This is reflected in their faces, each of which tells its own story. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a look says even more. Not for nothing are the eyes considered the mirror of the soul.

This series is a long-term project. Almost 50 impressive portraits have been created over the years, and each picture has its own history. These faces can be read like books.  The personal experience of each individual has shaped their physiognomy: life events have engraved and have left visible traces in the form of laughter or worry lines. 

But all that counts is the moment when I press the button and capture that unique expression. 

I am not interested in creating comparative images to depict a temporal process. Rather, it is about capturing a status quo. Much as the importance of portraiture emerged in history at the same time as interest in the life histories and experiences of individuals, these portraits are meant to be contemporary witnesses. Their purpose is to record facial features in order to preserve them for posterity.

It is in the eye of the beholder to find a face likeable or unlikeable. After all, we learn from infancy to recognize other people by their physiognomy – a kind of survival instinct that helps us distinguish friend from foe. 

But the Nauticlegends portrait series has no such grand ambitions. The familiar names of those portrayed are intended to arouse curiosity, encouraging us to look at their faces intensively for once and study them with inspiration. Something you almost never have the opportunity to do in real life, where the rules of decency forbids prevent us staring so blatantly at people’s faces. 

At the same time, these portraits are intended to arouse interest about the subjects themselves. Each portrait in Wave magazine is accompanied by 10 questions that portray the subject from a different perspective – perhaps we will even discover an unknown side to each individual, thus seeing them in a completely different light.

Each shoot is exciting, because always new and different. A special relationship arises between the two protagonists – the person to be portrayed and the photographer. The "subject" does not merely look into the lens – they also reveal themself to the person behind the camera, creating a unique shared experience. 

Only those who open up and give expression to their souls through their faces can expect a good portrait. It takes courage to play this exquisite game – but the result is something to be truly proud of. I look forward to more interesting faces, to expressions that speak volumes, and to many more fulfilling encounters.