My first contact with the city of Deyang was also the first trip to China of my life. Despite the great distance, the districts of Siegen-Wittgenstein and Deyang in Sichuan Province are connected by a friendship that dates back to 1988.

My work "The People from Deyang" deals with the inhabitants of this city. The focus is on a sociological problem: We often have problems memorizing the faces of people with different ethnic backgrounds. This work therefore represents a random section representing the different social classes of Deyang's population. 

This work is a classic portrait series. The 140 photos were deliberately put next to each other. This way, the individual characteristics of each person become clearly visible to us. Our "confusion" is thus resolved in view of the faces and enables us to view each person as an individual.