Poikas (Boys) is a portraiture series I created in my Berlin studio between 2012 and 2017. It portrays a special type of young men: "The boy next door in his Twens", whom I spontaneously encountered in everyday situations in Berlin, befriended and ultimately photographed. Poikas sheds light on the self-consciousness and vulnerability often hiding beneath the façade of youthful masculinity. The shootings that resulted in Poikas were experimental and unforced. Like a young man finding his way in life, I was an artist searching for new visual possibilities. I needed a language to express these complex, paradoxical feelings which, in my mind, define what it means to be a young man in the world today.