“One day I realized that my photographs were becoming a diary, an endless book of images that have meaning to me.”

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ralf Schmerberg does not work in conceptual series. Rather, his photography is a chronicle of the everyday, which is not bound to subject matter. If recurring themes emerge, they do so naturally. Schmerberg’s photographic oeuvre – compiled over the past two decades – reads like a visual journal of his life, work and travels. The messy reality he discreetly documents is often confrontational and ambiguous, inviting us to look closely and question our own preconceptions. Fascinated by those trivial details of our daily lives that most of us overlook, Schmerberg’s poetic gaze reveals the sublime in the banal. Whether it is in rendering powerful portraits of strangers with painterly chiaroscuro, depicting epic natural landscapes, or bringing to life the exuberant colours of Rajasthan, Schmerberg captures the subtle beauty of the mundane.