One consequence of my father’s work as a consultant has been moving around from country to country (8) since 1950, a tradition I continued, living/working as a scientist in 7 different countries. This meant a frequent change to new situations, new landscapes, new people and new environments.
Maybe as a result of these moves, but certainly also from the richness and diversity of ‘culture’ encountered, came the wish and urge to record & remember. In this sense my photography has a strong documentary connotation.
Over this period, i.e. since the fifties, the world changed dramatically faster and faster, globalization followed post war modernisation, sadly often at the expense of loss of culture, identity and sense of history. Traditional values and lifestyle were too often discharged as old, use- and valueless. Knowledge reaching/rooting back thousand of years was forgotten, a fact I deeply regretted. I began to document, what was still there, through photography backed by my own research.
While I know that the process of forgetting is irreversible, I try to give the past a ‘voice’ and hope society will eventually comprehend that if we do not try to understand and honour the past, albeit with a critical eye, we will have difficulties understanding present times and more so handling the future.