Dreaming is like living in another world. But even in this seemingly safe dimension there are dark sides and nightmares. Whether it's processing what we've experienced or pure fantasy, bad dreams plague us all. Most of the time only images remain, but these remain for a very long time. Here you can see three of my nightmares.

2020. Corona, the pandemic, the first lockdown. An everyday life that has to adapt. Your own home, otherwise a place of refuge from the noisy outside world, is slowly transforming into rooms that are far too narrow, in which deaf bodies wander back and forth. And yet at some point the apartment door becomes a bulwark, the windows transform to longings, one's own self becomes very quiet and the world becomes a magical memory. Redefined life without completely losing sight of the old existence. There will be an after, but the question remains whether the self from before will still experience it.

Locked up in your own self. The evolving understanding of a self-concept. No way out of the spaces we have created for ourselves. With its senses dulled, the self tries to free itself from itself, but fails because of the external, because of the limits that we ourselves have set and which we have made seemingly insurmountable. And so the self remains behind in restricted change.

"When a mother dies, the whole garden dies."

Just one of those metaphors I stumbled across while searching for the right words for an obituary I wasn't ready to write. On June 18, 2020, my mother died at the age of 66. A sentence that still sounds surreal. Just like the situation we suddenly found ourselves in. Ultimately I found my own words for the obituary. And later, pictures that contain the pain that has accompanied me ever since.

Waking up in an unfamiliar environment, people who seem to know you but who you can't identify, a strange figure in the mirror, every day. Living with dementia means living in oblivion. It is not uncommon for this disease to not only affect the individual's life, but also to have an impact on those around them. No longer being recognized by people who are dear to you, suddenly finding yourself in the role of responsibility, caring for a person who is becoming increasingly helpless and knowing that things won't get any better. All of this takes strength, physically and mentally. I was allowed to accompany this process and tell Maria’s story.

Beauty is actually relative, but clearly defined in our society. Where perfectionism is more important than anything else, every person lives with self-doubt, sometimes even self-hatred. Small body shapes that you try to squeeze yourself into, which destroy individualism with their very existence. Every person is different, not everything has to be within the norm until it redefines itselfagain at some point. "Sticks And Stones" highlights the mistakes and becomes a critical examination of today's mania for perfectionism. By focusing on physical flaws, the self-image of beauty is called into question. Are flaws human or unacceptable? At what point does being different mean being ugly? A stimulus for reflection on one's own moral understanding and a step towards self-acceptance in the midst of a dogmatic crowd.