After a brief stint at the San Francisco Art Institute, he continued his education as cinematographer at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Here he fell in love with the aesthetic extremes of L.A. In parallel to lighting and shooting music videos and features with Tom Waits, Sergio Mendes or Robert De Niro, he began to pursue his hobby of urban archeology. Over the last ten years he has photographed and collected the remnants of the vanishing Tiki cult in America. He hopes that his Book of Tiki adequately represents the visual seductiveness of this unique, never-before-recognized facet of American pop culture. When not shooting cable TV movies in Europe, Sven lives with his 9 year old son, Diego, in his hilltop home overlooking the Silverlake reservoir in the center of Los Angeles.