The Project

Since 2009, I have been working on a photo documentary series about the culture of record stores. When I started the project six years ago, I assumed that there wouldn’t be many record stores left within a few years. Over the past few decades, many record stores have vanished, but a positive trend is now the new retro idea of  „Back to Vinyl“ by music lovers all over the world. Several new stores have opened up in big cities like Berlin, Brussels, Paris, and Los Angeles, preserving the “record store phenomenon” as an expression of youth culture.

Over the past six years, I traveled around the world to 33 cities on five continents to photograph over 200 record stores – the store owners, the customers, and the people who work there.

My photos show their love and passion for vinyl, CDs, and purchasing music in a store. This is what they all share and what really sets the tone for such stores around the globe.

I found great stores on all continents in cities like New York, Cambridge, Minnapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Berlin, Brighton, Brussels, Glasgow, Hamburg, London, Newcastle, Oslo, Paris, Reykjavik, Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Sydney and even in Hobart, Tasmania.