Duration: Five years.

Location: Hamburg, Germany, although I mostly work on the road.

Education: Self-taught.

Career path: My interest for art, photography and fashion started early on, even before I knew that there was such a thing as fashion photography. I surrounded myself with various art forms across all genres and studied them out of curiosity. I picked up my first camera in high school, but I’ve been working professionally since 2016.

Now, my clients are fashion labels and magazines. I shoot fashion with a focus on menswear, and my other arenas tend to include photojournalism and landscapes. My work has been published for clients like Numéro, Office Magazine and Vogue Nederland.

Cultural influences: I’ve always been inspired by photography and cinematography. When I learned about fashion photography and how it was used as a medium by the greats like Sarah Moon and Irving Penn, I couldn’t help but dive deeper into it.

I was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and my family moved to Germany when I was six. Being a child of mixed heritage—my mom is Sri Lankan and my dad is Malay—and growing up in the suburbs of Hamburg, I was very highly influenced by Islamic philosophy and Japanese cinematography. Whether I was at home or out in society, my environment was very multicultural. This has helped me always look for the bigger picture and has also nurtured my curiosity, which continues to shape me and my work to this day.

Favorite projects: Topboi Phase 7, a project I shot for fashion brand Topboi Citizen in Kuala Lumpur with local creative Ridduan “TTFGA” Ismail, from whom I learned a lot. The project was about street casting new talent and introducing them to the fashion industry while shooting them against beautiful backdrops.

Both of my shoots for fashion brand Filling Pieces. For its spring/summer 2020 collection, we shot in Dakar, Senegal, on the theme of family. The project was a homecoming for creative director and stylist Dieylane Cisse, who hadn’t visited his hometown in four years. I was lucky to be able to capture that energy and transfer it to the shoot with Dieylane himself.

Also, for Filling Pieces’s autumn/winter 2020 collection, we shot in Marrakech and Casablanca, Morocco, where we flew out in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and created a story about individuals embarking on a spiritual journey. It was about being connected with each other while being physically apart, something that we can all relate to right now.

Approach: My aim is to create work that still feels relevant ten years from now. It’s important to create a setting that is authentic and feels natural to the talent I shoot, most of whom are street casted. I believe honest emotions are timeless; even if my concepts are staged, I aim to capture the real moments in between.

Aspirations: I see myself continuing my photography from my own studio and developing strong, genuine relationships with creatives and brands. I’d also love to expand into other forms of storytelling such as cinematography, as well as guiding clients through creative direction.

Philosophy: Create honest and timeless work. And that’s only possible if the work reflects my values.