Burma photo show on GEO.de

On the left the GEO issue with the piece on the Burma photo show, on the right the screenshot of the show on Geo.de/burma

It’s sometime in 2006. A few months ago I came back from my second trip to Burma. It was exhausting – but incredibly fulfilling. I wanted to make a dream come true. If I couldn’t be a GEO photographer, then at least I wanted to know what it feels like. So I travelled the country for four weeks with an assistant and shot photographs non-stop.

Now, back home and a few weeks later, I can hardly believe it. Through a contact, my Burma pictures have landed on the desks of the GEO editorial team – and they want to do a multimedia story with me! They want me to come to Hamburg.

Yesss!!!!

A short while later I’m sitting in the office of Jan, the photo editor. Together we put together the right images for the show.

His office mate Lars walks in and drops the new issue of GEO on the table. It’s the issue marking GEO’s 30th anniversary.

I’m speechless.

Because it is exactly 30 years, to the month, after that first issue from October 1976 – the one that fascinated me so utterly, whose images I soaked up, and which set off something in me I didn’t yet have a name for back then: longing. A hunger to see!

Because a distant, unknown world was unfolding in front of me and pulling me under its spell: the Andaman Islands, Peking, volcanoes.

My father subscribed to the magazine, and so every month I could dream my way into my adventures all over again.

And now the 30-year issue? Does that mean something?

I think it’s a sign. I’m going to keep going down this road.