"But a mermaid has no tears"
For a long time I wanted to do a large project, to really deal extensively with a topic and work it out in peace, without the feeling to have something "forgotten". The idea comes from a friend of mine, Aloisia Köhler, who gave me a poem about a mermaid she had written.
This quickly led to the desire to create a whole concept and to implement it photographically. We spun around for a while, sending each other moodboards and ideas. Aloisia unfortunately could not be involved in the implementation for personal reasons, but her ideas and thoughts were always present at the project.
As I work out concepts, I quickly got Mika on board. I knew her as a very creative hair and make-up artist years ago when I started photography.
What attracted me to the theme of the little mermaid was, on the one hand, the fairy tale. Even as a child I loved fairy tales of all the countries of the world and the somewhat gloomy I particularly liked. The little mermaid after Hans Christian Andersen I found particularly exciting, in that she has a clear goal in mind: infinity, immortality. But she takes it all, lets go of everything she knows. This longing for something unknown, the search for meaning and the meaning I found very fascinating and comprehensible.
On the other hand, I find the "underwater world" exciting because it is out of focus, has no clear contours, the light is a very own shape down there. This I wanted to visualize through long exposure times, shadow games and, of course, actual (sub)water images. The compositions should be quite simple with a close relation to nature, similar to the paintings of the romance.
In addition, I did not want to photograph the outer story of the fairy tale, but rather the inner one. It was important for me to work with gestures as well as with symbols.
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