Rear Seat Diaries
Perspectives in Motion
The “Rear Seat Diaries” are my long-term project – born out of coincidence, curiosity, and the realization that my side window is more than just a frame with glass: it is my window to the world.
The first images were taken in 2022 on the way to Spain – still with a phone and a selfie stick. The car was packed to the roof, water bottle, spare wheelchair – everything visible in the frame. Back then, I didn’t recognize the potential. Only a few months later did I start photographing my own surroundings this way. When reviewing and editing these images, I noticed that some of them showed the entire window frame. That was the moment I understood that the frame itself could become the subject – and that this was where the strength of the series lay.
Since then, the project has steadily evolved. I sit in my power wheelchair in the rear of my adapted VW Caddy, the camera supported on a small tripod. It points sideways out of the window, and the frame remains always the same: a fixed view through which the world outside passes by. What sounds like a simple technical setup is in fact a lively, sometimes rather wild process: the car shakes, the wheelchair isn’t fixed, the camera wobbles, and the autofocus struggles with rain, dust, and reflections. Everything that happens is captured in motion – nothing is smoothed out afterwards.
Over time, the series expanded to include a conceptual dimension. The frame stayed the same, but what happened inside it began to change. Scenes were deliberately composed, objects placed, moments staged. At the same time, I began creating images with longer exposure times, turning the movement of the outside world into lines, structures, and textures.
Today, the “Rear Seat Diaries” are a mixture of observation and artistic intervention, of everyday moments and carefully planned ideas. Sometimes a quick trip to the supermarket is enough, sometimes it takes weeks of preparation. The project has become an ongoing diary – not in words, but in windows. It shows the world as I see it: sometimes sober, sometimes poetic, sometimes surprising. And always through the same frame.