1972 – Born Minden, Germany
Lives/works in London
Jens’ early efforts focused exclusively on his other childhood passion: cars. “As a kid, I must have taken thousands of pictures of cars”, he recalls, “Perhaps that’s why I love Jaques-Henri Lartigue. I had the same youthful obsession with photography and automobiles.”
As a teenager, Jens was torn between car design and photography as a career, eventually opting for the latter, much to his parents’ disapproval. Their displeasure increased when, after training in Germany, he moved to London in 1996. “I took all my savings, said my goodbyes and headed for the UK”, explains Jens. “Six months later, all the money was gone and my parents were nagging at me to come home and get a proper job.”
Deciding to stick it out, he was thrown a lifeline when he “hassled” car photographer Chris Bailey into hiring him as an assistant – a job that brought him financial stability and the opportunity to indulge his twin passions once more. While continuing to shoot ad campaigns for clients in the UK and overseas, Jens now devotes more time to non-commercial work which has resulted in a string of Awards: AOP Assistants’ Awards in 1998, 1999 and 2000, culminating in the Velvia Bursary Award in 2001; a John Kobal Photographic Prize in 2000; the Kodak Class of 2000 Award; AOP Awards in 2001, 2002 and 2005; and the 2004 Schweppes Photographic Portrait Prize.
Jens’ work has also been widely exhibited in several group shows at the AOP Gallery and Sadler’s Wells between 1998 and 2005, the Cable Street Gallery, Limehouse in 2000, the National Portrait Gallery between 2000 and 2005, and Marmelade, Wapping in 2002. He has also had solo exhibitions at The Fox Reformed in 2001, and The Old Bakery, London in 2006.