Last weekend, my brother Matthias, his girlfriend Katja, their friend Sven, my better half Christoph and I spent a weekend at our cabin in the Obwalden mountains.

Shania is a four-year-old girl and suffers from Epidermolyis bullosa. EB is a very rare genetic connective tissue disorder that affects 1 child out of every 20,000 births. EB is actually a group of disorders that share a prominent manifestation of extremely fragile skin that blisters and tears from friction or trauma. I met and photographed Shania and her family for Wir Eltern magazine in June.

Here are some outtakes from the Annabelle special about the Grand Tour of Switzerland — shot in April, accompanied by the ever lovely Stefanie Rigutto, reporter and partner-in-crime. See more photos here!

A while ago, I met Sara and Carmen, a lesbian couple living in Winterthur, Switzerland. They live in a registered partnership and have a daughter, Joa, who's turned 1 in July. I interviewed them in the summer and have recently started photographing them for my (book) project about lesbian lives. The idea behind this project is to document and highlight the challenges, difficulties and discriminations lesbian women are dealing with around the world. I started work in Johannesburg, and I'm very happy to have found Sara and Carmen for my Swiss chapter (and also that they live considerably closer).

In August, I spent two weeks in Angola, on assignment for Todos magazine. I had a wonderful time, and assembling photos for this post makes me miss Africa very much. Here are a few making-of shots, scenes from the road and outtakes.

When my friend Sereina recommended this hotel to me, I suspected it was going to be great. But only when we arrived at the O Facho Guest House in Foz do Arelho, I realised how extremely and intensely awesome it was.

In May, I went on a vacation to Portugal. I usually try to vacation somewhere close to home, in a location I can reach by train, because I fly quite a bit for work and I fear for my environmental karma (oh, who am I kidding — that's shot anyway). So going to the airport and boarding a plane simply for leisure felt very unusual and luxurious to me.