noctropolis - city of night
This site features my photography of cemeteries, cathedrals, castles, and a few other things ...
I'm inspired by cemeteries and cathedrals for the same reason: these are monuments built to the intangible. In the case of the beautiful monuments to the dead, I find it touching to see the amount of love and artistry that went in to commemorating someone who will never see or appreciate their own memorial.
As for cathedrals, the amount of time, the amazing feats of architecture, and the sheer manpower that went into building these colossal edifices is amazing; and all for something intangible. As a child, I remember watching an educational film in school about the construction of cathedrals, and the narrator used a phrase that has always stuck in my mind: that they were built "to show man's everlasting devotion to God."
Cathedrals and cemetery monuments are just that - everlasting. To see them is to touch the past, and to feel that devotion that someone somewhere in the past must have felt when they built them.
I think I am fascinated by castles because as an American, many of them are so much older than anything in my country. To stand in the Tower of London which began construction in 1066 is just staggering to me. And so many of them have terrible histories that endows them with a feeling of melancholy that I find incredibly appealing.