darkling captures

When I left school in Austria at 16, I was faced with two career paths: photography, or cooking.
I picked the latter, enticed by the promise of living away from the confines of home, unsupervised.
I’ve walked that road for nearly 30 years now, cooking and travelling and picking up stories along the way.
Photography re-entered my life in earnest after the death of my father in 2018. He was a photography enthusiast, and I can see him now in my mind’s eye stopping at camera shops to admire the Leicas on display.
He never had the pleasure of owning one, and now I think of him often as I shoot with the Leica M10R I bought after he died, mindful of the joy he’d derive from my shooting on this particular camera.
Over the years, photography has become a bigger part of my life, providing balance to the frantic atmosphere in kitchens, developing from hobby to a passion for capturing street life, without any staging or plan, teaching myself how to use the rangefinder as I went.
These are some of the photos which show moments which have captured my eyes or a part of my soul. They primarily document cities, buildings stark and hard and unforgiving, juxtaposed with people walking, sitting, smoking, begging, lamenting, loving, living living living.
I’ll always be a chef first and foremost; I made that decision at 16. But photography has opened my eyes to the world around me, which I might have otherwise passed, blindly.
I photograph people and places. Usually in B&W but occasionally in colour. Do get in touch below.