"Aufgang" is series of intimate photographic portraits poetically exploring the lives of young immigrants in a small working class industrial town in Southern Germany. The German term roughly translates to "rising" or "emergence" and exists as a metaphor for the experiences of the youth who invited me into their lives—a representation of that delicate transition into adulthood: a vulnerable period in which you are no longer considered a “kid” in the eyes of grown-ups but not entirely an “adult” either. Surrounded by endless fields of greenery or the ruins of ornate castles constructed centuries ago, these teenagers populated a landscape that the great renaissance painters visualized in their canvases. To them, however, escape is the dream, and departure is the prime desire.
