It’s time to say goodbye!
For nearly two decades, I fought for a lifelong dream. A long time spent accepting every hardship just to reach a single goal: making a living through photography – or at least earning enough to survive. Over these years, I paid an extraordinarily high price: More than fifteen years without health or retirement insurance because I simply could not afford it. Post-traumatic stress disorder that still haunts me. Severe, cumulative depressions. And a perpetual existence below the poverty line, shadowed by relentless existential anxiety and debt.
A year ago, I decided to give it one last try. Today, twelve months later, I am completely spent – at the absolute end of my strength. I tried everything. I sent out hundreds, if not thousands, of applications and pitches. Over the past year alone, I worked from dawn until dusk doing nothing but trying to land assignments.
Naturally, I’ve spent a long time asking myself why success never came. It certainly wasn’t for a lack of trying. For years, a quiet suspicion grew: that I was merely fooling myself – or being led to believe – that my work was actually good. A delusion, clearly. I’ve often compared it to someone struggling with anorexia, standing in front of a mirror and seeing something completely detached from reality. That is how I came to view my work. Over those many years I always thought my photographs had value, and those who praised me over the years were either just being polite – or simply lying to my face.
Either way, I have reached the end.
Physically, mentally, and financially.
And so, I am bringing this chapter to a close.
