Tobias Meier

Happiness is a warm camera with my finger on the trigger

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It all started with music, but I quickly found the mainstream to be very boring. So I began looking for alternatives and soon found myself in the sphere of various subcultures and countercultures. I liked the way the content was conveyed—emotions, criticism, resistance—everything felt authentic. I could identify with it and absorbed it. In 2010, I visited an exhibition by Ed Templeton, an ex-professional skateboarder. For the first time, photographs spoke to me on a level that had been foreign to me until then—I decided to start photographing myself. To this day, pop culture remains a source of inspiration for me that inevitably influences my photographic work.

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My photos are never staged or arranged. The subjects are never altered or repositioned but are captured exactly as they are found.