Wolfgang Bellwinkel examines something that can be described as a kind of state of mind: the longing for the other, the foreign and the restlessness of someone who is looking for experiences, perhaps for knowledge, far from the everyday. Bellwinkel collages photographs from the last 18 years with her own short stories as autonomous companions to the photographic material. Photographs taken in Asia form a unity when combined with images from war and post-war scenes in Afghanistan, the Middle East and the Balkans. Personal images meet documentary, world events and biographical are interwoven. The book strongly advocates biographically oriented photography that contextualizes its author with the events of an ever-transforming, globalized world.

Wolfgang Bellwinkel (*1959) lives and works as a photographer, curator and lecturer in Berlin and Southeast Asia. Most recently, he curated the exhibition Das Vertraute im Fremden / Foreign Familiar for the Goethe Institute Bangkok with stations in Manila, Yogyakarta and Phnom Penh.