After finding photographer Robert Frank’s exhibition catalogue “From New York to Nova Scotia,” Stephan was drawn to visiting the place. It took, and he settled there and now lives on his organic farm near Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, since 2000.

Stephan developed a social awareness, practically as a mere toddler, when accompanying his father during political campaigns in 1969. The Vietnam War was on the news nightly. As he matured, his awareness of social issues sharpened. In Germany he became a conscientious objector and served his mandatory time in a social organization, helping to ensure transportation for disabled citizens.

He was involved in various political activities until he started photography school in Berlin in 1989. After completing school in 1991, he worked for various well-known architectural and industrial Germany companies. During this period he also conducted personal photography projects, documenting living situations affected by social injustice, and societies undergoing political and economic changes.

At the beginning of the new millennium, he temporarily stepped away from photography to live the changes he wanted to see, as a farmer, by establishing the Green Dragon Organic Farm in Nova Scotia, Canada. After seven years he returned to photography and returned to his previous interest:  documenting societies under threat of change, in Nova Scotia and other parts of the world.

Stephan discovered that political activism requires a very long breath. By 1989 he had to step away from engaging in it to cope with his experiences. He turned his attention to educating himself in the trade of photography at Lette-Verein in Berlin. Later he transitioned from photography as a trade to photography as an art.  With this shift, Stephan felt the freedom, or ease of mind, to put more of his heart into his work.

“The meaning of the project determines which camera technique is appropriate; you are not focused on either or digital or analog.  Skill and trade become important when you know what you are using.  The technical aspects enhance the message.  You can do art in black and white, color, matt or glossy finish.  You can become very artistic and creative using digital because you don’t have to worry about the costs. The important part is being able to utilize the technical aspects of the highest potential for the project.”

From 1993 – 2000 he worked as an industrial and architectural photographer in Germany. He gained experience in high profile companies such as Krupp Stahl, and numerous major construction corporations.  http://shphotographie.com/clients

In 1996, with the discussion about brown coal and strip mining in Stephan’s home state at a peak, he engaged in a photographic comparison of areas and people affected by this destructive mining technique, comparing the impact in parts of his industrialized home country with the impact on indigenous people on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. It turned out that both cultures were equally affected and threatened by the destruction of the landscape, and the social networks that had been established for centuries.  Both areas experienced relocation, sometimes harsher and more violent, somewhat slightly cushioned by the social net that was offered by the authorities.

By 2000 he decided not to continue in the corporate world. It began to feel hollow and not genuine, and he did not want to be a part of it.  It was time to live what he was saying and make a life change.  At that point, the Green Dragon Organic Farm became his focus.  It was his expression of living what he was emphasizing - the logical consequence of his activist life.

Stephan did not do any photography projects for seven years.  In 2007, he obtained a digital camera, and this launched the next chapter in his photography career.  He began with the human aspect of the work and culture of those living around him – the fisherman, the sugar wood farmer and many others; thereby, capturing the essence of his chosen home in Nova Scotia.

Being involved in the farming community and understanding what it means to farm from a human aspect, he saw an ongoing decline in small-scale farming and his peer group.  A project then unfolded about the people who are producing the food and tending the animals that later are shipped away and slaughtered. Who are the people who are price takers on both sides, caught in the middle between costs and what they will be paid for their produce?  The photography project of local farmers, “The Vanishing Breed” was born. The title was inspired by the work of photographer and ethnologist Edward S.Curtis. He received two grants from “Arts Nova Scotia” to fund this project.  Stephan decided to use an analog middle format, black and white film to capture the forty-two photos of the project with this “vanishing” technique.

In 2008 he went to Thailand to document the “3rd International Conference on Gross National Happiness.” There was a strong emphasis on youth (one-third of the participants). 

2012 was his first trip to Cuba with one camera and one lens.  Those photos became a book, “La dignidad diaria” (or “the daily dignity”).

Stephan’s current project is an inventory of Cuban monuments, titled “Memory Stones.” Since he had witnessed the collapse of the Berlin Wall, it triggered his understanding of how the destruction of symbols is a way for people to believe that their daily struggle is over. 

During this first visit to Cuba Stephan became interested in socialist street art as well. His experiences from 20 years prior, of the collapse of the European East Block, made it seem important to document this street art since it might be destroyed by systemic changes. It became obvious that the Cuban society was in the process of changing towards a more open market and western societal model. He felt the possibility that this development might erupt at some point into violence that then may lead to the destruction of the expressions of a repressive government.

Stephan decided to realize this project with his large format camera with 4x5 inch black and white film.  In the winter of 2015-16, he traveled to the western provinces of Cuba with his camera gear. He used the same public transportation that the Cubans depend upon to reach towns and villages off the beaten tourist path, to find monuments that were embedded in the daily lives of the local population.  He stayed with the locals, made friends with them, shared their meals and lifestyle and developed a feel for what it means to live for generations under the embargos, the ration system, and the mismanagement of a stagnant administration.  He felt the same noise, the same chaos, the same inconvenience when trying to get a taxi, and experienced the mindset that is shaped by all the obstacles of daily life.  At the same time, he witnessed the changes of the society, as it slowly opens to the capitalist world and the impact of the free market, and trying to keep the people satisfied while their world opens up to the inequalities of the capitalist world.

In the winter of 2016-17, he continued, this time in the furthest North Eastern provinces of the island with the same photographic methods.

For the third trip in 2018, he traveled to the South Eastern tip of Cuba and along the Caribbean shore as far as parts of the province of Las Tunas.

Three more trips in consecutive years are planned. The work continues…