Mads WestermannI have been taking pictures since I was a teenager. My first camera was a dented old Olympus Trip 35 which I used to shoot black and white. It was one of the teachers in the after school club that introduced me to photography and taught me dark room technique so I could develop my own shots. I still vividly remember the excitement I felt when I was in the dark room watching the motives slowly emerging on the paper in the trays. A couple of years later I spent a year on a Danish Folk High School and I remember most of my time there as being spent in the dark room.

I was (and still am) fascinated by the ability to freeze what I saw and have enough time to study it and discover all the details that are not obvious at first glance. Bringing the camera out of the normal eye-height gave me the ability to discover a whole new world. Suddenly I could view the world from any perspective I wished and have all the time I needed to suck in the subtle details.

An interesting face always  raises a lot of questions which, when I try to answer them, gives perspective to my own life.

Apart from my participation in workshops and a couple of courses, I have absolutely no formal photographic education. All my knowledge and skills are acquired by, reading everything about photography I could get my hands on and by seeing what the masters are doing. By talking to more experienced photographers, by reading what they have written about their art and techniques and by experimenting and mimicking I have over time developed into the photographer I am today.

My favorite motive is faces. Often I see a face that makes me want to know the story behind the expression, the eyes, and the wrinkles. An interesting face always makes me wonder and raises a lot of questions which, when I try to answer them myself, gives perspective to my own life.

My ambition as photographer is to be able to convey some of the details in the world that most people are missing because they are busy living their lives. If I can shoot a motive that is sufficiently interesting to make someone pause for a brief moment to look at it and then have them notice details they would otherwise have missed, make them see beauty in what is at first glance ugly or ugliness in what is at first glance pleasing, then I believe that my photos have made a positive difference.