My series Menschenkunde, Felsenfest, and Seelensucht reflect on traditional oil paintings. In Menschenkunde, ordinary people pose as members of a presumptive Patrician class; in Felsenfest, religion and science collide; and in Seelensucht, Christian martyrs sit for the camera after they died. In these photographs, I seek to transform the elitism intrinsic to classical oil painting into a classless  concept by using photography as my medium and employing friends and sometimes strangers as models. 

Like Renaissance paintings, I use symbolism in my photographs to emphasize the meaning of an image. The secular symbols in my tableaux relate to common, contemporary objects, which imply  unfamiliar connotations, inviting the viewer to invent new meaning.