Sven Kirsten

Sven A. Kirsten (born 27 August 1955 in Hamburg) is a German cinematographer and non-fiction writer. Sven A. Kirsten was born as the grandson of a Hamburg shipowner and son of a co-founder of the record label Europa He studied film in Berlin, became a camera assistant at the NDR at the age of 23 and emigrated to Los Angeles at the age of 25. He then worked for some time as an illuminator and shot several music videos as a cameraman. At the beginning of the 1990s he shot some Hollywood films with Mistress – The Lovers of Hollywood, Mask of Murder 2 (Doppelganger) and Playtime – games of passion. In recent years he has mainly worked as a cameraman for German television films.In addition to his professional work, Sven Kirsten became known as an "urban archaeologist" in the rediscovery of the Tiki style. He wrote two books on this topic, "The Book of Tiki" and "Tiki Modern", which gained widespread distribution especially in the USA and made Kirsten the recognized leading expert in the Tiki community.