Gezicht op Slot Löwenburg bij Kassel 1903 - 1907

Geldolph Adriaan Kessler made this photo of Löwenburg Castle near Kassel. It’s a stereoscopic card, so it gives you that cool 3D effect when you look at it through a special viewer. I wonder what Kessler was thinking when he set up his camera. The scene has a ghostly, faded quality, like a memory from a fairytale. The towers and turrets of the castle are softened by the muted tones, blending into the overgrown landscape. It feels like time itself is eroding the stone. I can imagine Kessler, squinting through the lens, trying to capture not just the castle, but the feeling of the place. It's like he's trying to reach back in time, or preserve something that's slowly disappearing. It reminds me of some of Atget’s photos of Paris – that same sense of melancholic beauty, of finding something extraordinary in the everyday. They both invite us to look closer, to see the layers of history and emotion embedded in the world around us.