Statement
This photograph is from my ongoing project called “Stranger at Home.” I grew up in the USA with German parents, live in Germany today, and regularly return to the USA to visit friends and family. I am of both of these countries, but also perpetually split between them, never fully belonging to one or the other. “Stranger at Home” is a photographic project that seeks to capture, examine and communicate the tension between familiarity and strangeness, belonging and alienation, that I experience in both USA and Germany. In its current form, “Stranger at Home” is a collection of photographs that I have been consistently adding to since the summer of 2021. I carry a small digital camera with my at all times, so that I can act upon the impulse to photograph whenever it strikes.
Jakob fell in love with photography in 2017, when he stumbled across the work of the photojournalist Peter van Agtmael. What interests him most about photography is its ability to communicate the subconscious and ineffable. Jakob sees the photographic medium as more akin to poetry or literature than to painting or sculpture.