mg class="alignnone size-full wp-image-15861" alt="ludmilla-alexeyeva-russian-dissident-image-2-726x912" src="http://dergreif-online.de/www/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ludmilla-alexeyeva-russian-dissident-image-2-726x912.jpg" width="726" height="912" /> Last February I was sent by Greenpeace Magazine to Moscow to meet and photograph Lyudmila Alexeyeva. We went to her house on the famous Arbat road and there she was, a 86 year old tiny person wrapped in a blanket because the russian winter was again merciless. We decided to do the interview first and I thought I would have to wait for maybe one or two hours until I could start photographing, but (luckily) this was wrong thinking: she was telling us the whole story of her life, from the October Revolution to Stalin and the cold war period, her immigration to the US and why she left her own children there to go back to Russia in order to fight for the the human rights for her russian compatriots. (more…)

A few years ago I was sent by a magazine to photograph a travel feature about New England. We went to tiny villages named Gloucester and  Truro - both places where the american painter Edward Hopper spent a lot of time and found motives for his famous paintings. Although these places have changed since the 1920/30ies a lot I felt that the atmospehre of Hopper's work  is still present, so I started to think about what Hopper would be painting today and looked hopperesque places and situations. I was very lucky to have an exhibition with "Hopper's Land" at the very beautiful and prestigious Architektur Galerie in Munich and later on in Tübingen and having it coming up on  the 8. May until the end of July in the D.A.I. Freiburg

The summer of 2008 was already the so called "lame duck" period of George W. Bush, probably the most disliked American president in history. Within his presidency many people turned away from the US which stood for so long for a culture and lifestyle almost the whole world aspired to - including myself. With the election coming up I was curious what the American people really wanted from the next government. I went to New York and my assistant and I were roaming through the different quarters of the city in order to find people who were willing to express what is important to them. They had to write it with black paint on the board and hold it into the camera. (more…)

Since today is Palm Sunday (Sunday before Easter to commemorate Jesus arrival in Jerusalem), I thought this project might fit perfectly into this blog: Back in 1999 everybody was worried about the millenium bug, the millenium dome in London and a lot of other things which seemed to be different after the turn of the century. In fact pretty much nothing changed, not even the millenium dome was finished in time. In this year I was sent to Israel to do a story about german jews playing football  representing Germany on the Maccabiah, the so called jewish olympic games. I was very impressed about how different the country comes across to visitors who only saw its portrayal on TV before, either images of palestines throwing stones at israel army tanks or other romantic tourist views of religious sights. My interest lied in showing the everyday Israel and I found it only logical at the time to follow the footsteps of Christ - after all the millenium marked his birthday above everything else. The pics were printed as a cover story in The Sunday Telegraph Magazine and shown in the Museum Altona, Hamburg

In 2012 I started to ask young acting students at the very well reputated drama school "Otto-Falckenberg-Schule" in Munich if they would be interested in doing a photography piece. The idea was to portrait them in a studio situation in black and white and also playing a character of their choice outdoors in colour. I loved working with them and decided to photograph them once a year for as long as they're studying. I think this project will become more and more interesting the longer it goes on, since they are developing and hopefully I do too…

Here we can see four images taken from an photo essay about a book written by Haruki Murakami called "after the quake". I used the collection of short stories as a guide through Japan. The settings in the book and subsequently the locations for my pictures were rather bland as there was an empty beach in November, a baseball pitch at night or a lovehotel in an industrial town in the north. The idea was to find images which convey the feeling of being lost and alienated, not comprehending the outside world. The work was shown in a gallery for japanese culture along the release of the German edition of "after the quake" at the Frankfurt bookfair.

mg class="alignnone size-large wp-image-15428" alt="William Hurt" src="http://dergreif-online.de/www/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/01-william-hurt-671x700.jpg" width="671" height="700" /> Hello, First of all I would like to express my gratitude to the makers of "Der Greif". I feel very privileged taking part in the blog of their fantastic magazine, which I consider to be one of the most interesting around. It is my first blog and I'd like to fill it with a range of my work - be it personal or commissioned work. I am taking pictures since I was 14 and make a living of it for already quiet some time after having graduated with an MA at LCPDT, which is now known as London College of Communication. (more…)