Siegen gets a bad press.

When I moved here in 2006 from the picture-postcard perfection of Passau, I experienced something of a culture shock. All I knew about the city came from a joke: “The best thing about Siegen is the motorway to Cologne.”

Instead of Baroque architecture lining cobbled streets, there was concrete. Gone were the Danube on one side and the Inn on the other. Siegen had a river too, the Sieg, but you wouldn't have known it. In the centre of town, it was hidden beneath an ugly car park.

Twenty years later, much of Siegen is unrecognisable. The river has finally been uncovered and given its rightful place in the town centre. Things have changed, mostly for the better.

But the attractive images that appear when you search for Siegen on the internet aren't what interest me.

Does anyone really need another photograph of the Nikolaikirche? And how can anyone make the admittedly lovely view from the Schlosspark look different from the thousands of photographs already taken there?

I'm drawn to the sights that don't appear in city guides. The unloved, the unnoticed and the unseen.

Around every corner are things we pass every day without really registering. Little details of our lives that have become so familiar we've stopped seeing them.

As chain stores take over our high streets and property developers reshape our homes and workplaces, our towns and cities are gradually losing their individuality. Visit almost any town in Germany and you'll encounter the same shops, the same architecture and the same attempts to make everything look modern, clean and marketable.

Yet individuality survives.

In our gardens, our homes, our workplaces and the spaces in between, people leave their marks. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally. These little expressions of personality are what interest me.

Unseen Siegen is my attempt to document them before they disappear.

I photograph the ugly too. It exists alongside us, regardless of how enthusiastically PR companies, property developers and faceless corporations try to polish everything into something presentable.

While others photograph perfect cappuccinos sitting on fashionable wooden tables designed to look old, I'm more likely to reach for my camera when somebody spills the coffee.

Weeds pushing through cracked concrete fascinate me. I see shapes in shadows, patterns in piles of rubbish and unexpected beauty in places where nobody thought to put any.

I see beauty in the ugly and ugliness in the beautiful.

Maybe it's just me, but I believe the things most people overlook are every bit as interesting as the things we're told to admire.

And they're worth recording.

I'm comfortable with a camera, but Unseen Siegen isn't intended as a showcase of technical perfection or a collection of what someone might consider my best photographs.

I'm not interested in counting pixels, obsessing over equipment or manufacturing dreamy, blurred backgrounds simply because that's what photography is supposed to look like.

Apart from some basic editing, I want my photographs to remain true to what I saw. Not necessarily pretty. Not necessarily flattering. Just real.

This is Siegen as I see it. Its peculiarities, contradictions, overlooked corners and occasional moments of unexpected beauty.

So take your time. Have a look around. Perhaps you'll recognise somewhere you've walked past a hundred times without giving it a second thought.

See the UNSEEN SIEGEN.

About me

I'm a Brit who moved to Germany many years ago and somehow ended up in Siegen in 2006. I'm still here, so the place can't be all bad.

Photography isn't my profession. My working life is spent in the event industry, helping make other people's shows happen. When I'm not doing that (and quite often whilst doing that), I enjoy wandering around with a camera, looking for things that most people wouldn't consider worth photographing.

I'm not particularly interested in having the latest equipment or following photographic trends. I'm more interested in what catches my eye, whether that's an unusual building, a neglected doorway, a strange shadow or something completely ordinary seen from a different angle.

I don't claim to be an artist, and I certainly don't claim to have discovered some profound hidden truth about Siegen.

I just enjoy looking at things differently. In fact, I can’t help seeing things differently to most folk.

And, if you’re lucky, you might even see me and ask yourself “Why is he taking a photo of that?”

Neil

Interested in a photograph, a print, an exhibition or whatever else you like? Feel free to get in touch.

neilophenia@googlemail.com