MELATEN

One Place, Many Faces

Some places reveal their character slowly. They invite you to return, to look closer, and to discover details you may have overlooked before.

Melaten Cemetery in Cologne is such a place for me.

I want to explore this familiar yet ever-changing environment through repeated visits, observing its atmosphere, structures, light and quiet moments. The seasons change, the light shifts, and the same place can feel entirely different from one visit to the next.

For this project, I have deliberately limited myself to two photographic approaches: a 35mm lens or a Lensbaby. These limitations are not restrictions for their own sake. They are an invitation to work more consciously, to slow down and to make deliberate decisions about what I include in a frame — and what I leave out.

But this project is not only about Melaten. It is also about the person behind the camera.

Will I begin to notice different things? Will my compositions become more reduced? Will my relationship with this place change as my photographic vision develops?

I don’t know yet.

And that is precisely what makes this project worth pursuing.

One place. Many visits. An evolving way of seeing.