When I started my photo project Little Princes in 2010, I had just come back to Cologne from a one-year stay in Istanbul. In Istanbul, once in a while I would notice dressed up little boys on the streets. With their beaked slippers and white coats they set themselves apart like fairy-tale figures from the hectic metropolis. Back in Cologne, I learned that those were costumes for the special occasion of circumcision – a ceremony a few weeks after the operation that is celebrated here, too. Hundreds of friends and relatives meet in huge convention halls to celebrate the boy. Long before the circumcision debate in Germany, I started photographing families, and one family even let me enter their home. Besides the boys’ costumes, the often-pompous clothes of the guests and the ballroom decoration fascinated me. The title Little Princes indicates that the boys are treated on their day indeed as little noblemen.