Born in Hong Kong in 1977, Kurt was originally trained as a health visitor at the University of Liverpool. He worked and traveled extensively across Europe, the Americas and Asia. In 1999, Kurt co-founded Prema Vasam, a charitable home for disabled and disadvantaged children in Chennai, South India. Kurt became a full-time photographer in 2003 and was the winner of the Luis Valtuena International Humanitarian Photography Award with his first picture story documenting the treatment of disabled children in India. He worked for many other NGOs and covered stories from Female Infanticide to ballroom dancers.

Returning to exploring his Chinese roots, Combing for Ice and Jade, a love letter to the artist’s nanny, one of the few remaining self combed women in the world, has won him the WMA, the Punctum award at Lianzhou Foto, the Asia Reference Photo Award and the Photo Folio award at Rencontre d’Arles. The installation has been shown at the Himalayas Museum in Shanghai, the Zhongshan Museum of Art, Finnish Musuem of Photography and Rencontres d’Arles. The work will travel to Grote Kerk in Breda and Singapore Esplanade and Mai Manó House in Budapest in 2020. A monograph of the work was published by Jiazazhi Press in 2019 and was named one of best Photobooks of 2019 by Time, El País, Esquire, Art Paper and Lens Culture amongst others.

He is represented by The Photographer’s Gallery in London, Up Gallery in Taiwan and Jen Bekman Gallery in New York.