Olaf Meinhardt   Photographer

Olaf Meinhardt specialises in travel photography in the East. However he is also open to other destinations. His coffee-table photography books on Romania and Mongolia, his publications in travel magazines and various other printed products depict a sensitive man behind the camera. People willfully open their character and their culture to him. With a good eye for detail, as well as an understanding for wider issues, he portrays countries and people, their way of life and their environment. If he does take landscape pictures he doesn't soley rely on a theme but he waits patiently for brilliant moods. He prefers to be travel by bike, canoe or hike, this way he can encounter the many wonderful images from the perspective of an outdoor traveller. He loves to make his way through impassable terrains, to improvise and to achieve those difficult photo commissions. For the last two years he has mostly travelled together with his wife Anne, who documents their expeditions in humourous, ironic but also informative texts. Olaf Meinhardt began his career as a photographer on a bike trip around the world which lasted for about three and a half years, for which he consequently earned the title “globetrotter of the year 1996”. At that time his travel fever had already become chronic and so he packed his equipment again and again and introduced his camera to the countries of the world. There seems to be no indication that he will stop any time soon. For instance next on his list of adventures is a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway and a journey to the Far East in a Jeep.