this series changed my relationship to my grandparents. they let me see their life without masks. they let me in and so did I. I let them into my heart. and after 23 years Hermann and Ursula became Omi and Opi.
I never had a good or actually any relationship with my grandparents. the last time I slept at their house I was about a year old.
when my cousins got a new moped or financing their private school they send me pencils for my birthday of which two colors were already missing. but they always told me they loved me. which I of course not believed. I was the black sheep, the abandoned kid, the punk, the one who wanted to get into arts, the daughter of my mother. I was bold and honest and dirty.
when I came back from search and rescue in the central mediterranean I could not take one single photo. at one point I doubted my profession. so I started visiting them because taking pictures of them was a challenge and it was political, it was a documentation of life. but my personal privilege, my perspective wasn't problematic, it was important. because how they live is very far away from how I grew up.
and at one point I caught myself calling Hermann my grandfather. he became my opi.