I was born in southern Germany into a rather traditional Greek immigrant family, where there wasn’t much room to pursue a creative life — or one entirely of my own choosing. During summers spent at my family’s home in Greece, another world quietly took shape. I was a shy and observant child who would have happily grown gills, grown a tail, and learned to speak with animals.
For a while, that curiosity was pushed aside. The alternative childhood dream of becoming a punk rock drummer also had to give way to a career in engineering and a life increasingly defined by the grid, work, expectations, status, and the pursuit of a version of success I had never really questioned.

In 2018, I picked up a camera. Working alongside my cousins’ band, Pale Heart, I began documenting the life of a small-town band — the people, places, friendships, and quiet moments surrounding it.
A year later, I quit my job, packed up my life, and left with my trusted 5D Mark IV to explore a world beyond the horizon I had known. I began by documenting the aftermath of the 2019 bushfires in Australia, one of the resulting images later being exhibited at Katoomba Art Gallery. From there, I travelled to New Zealand, where I unexpectedly found myself stuck on a farm during COVID. In the process I documented our life in our community.

New Zealand became about much more than its vast mountains and valleys. Living alongside people who approached life through a closer, more intimate relationship with nature made me question many of the values I had previously taken for granted. My work became less about simply taking pretty pictures and more about understanding what it means to belong to a place and being part of a community.
It became about vulnerability, connection, and the courage to open ones’ heart to one another and to life.
Looking back, I realise that being sensitive and observant was never something I needed to overcome. It was something I needed to learn how to trust.

After finally completing my long-awaited dive certifications, an entirely new world revealed itself. The mindfulness that comes with being immersed in the ocean — and with recognising our fundamental relationship to it — deepened both my photographic practice and my own meditative exploration of the external and internal world.

In 2023, I returned to Australia to explore the aquatic world of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. I became involved in a variety of ocean conservation projects and began using my images not only to document what was happening beneath the surface, but to share the sense of wonder and responsibility I had found there. As a scuba instructor, I found another way to pass that feeling on using photography and teaching to encourage others to look differently at the ocean and to consider what it means to live more intentionally and sustainably, both around the ocean and within themselves.

In 2025, an opportunity arose to become part of the Crown-of-Thorns Starfish Control Program. Living full-time aboard a research vessel and working as a diver, I was given the rare opportunity to document conservation from the inside: the hands-on work of protecting a fragile ecosystem, alongside the quieter intimacy of life at sea.

The mountains, the forest, and the ocean have gradually become more than subjects to me. They have become home and with that, a growing sense of responsibility to protect them through my work.

The deeper I immerse myself in an environment, the deeper I seem to immerse myself within myself. I’ve come to realise that hands-on conservation is only part of the solution. Protecting our natural environment also means addressing the relationship people have with themselves, with one another, and with the world around them.
For me, sustainability is therefore not only an environmental question. It is a social one.

I believe we need to nurture healthier, more conscious relationships with ourselves and with each other to create communities built on care, connection, and sustainable values. Photography has become my vessel for exploring that space and for trying to close the gap between the discontent I once experienced and a life rooted in connection and purpose.

A lifetime split between two extremes — between cultures, between the engineered world and the natural one, between solitude and community — has taught me to remain open ground for people and life to express themselves authentically.

I don’t want to force a story into an image. I don’t have to, they always reveal themselves in surprising ways.

All one has to do is to be present in patience, to listen and observe waiting for the right moment.