While we enjoy dinner together, Nathalie alternately speaks German and Swedish with no hesitation. When she came to Stockholm a few years ago, however, she could not speak Swedish nor English. It was hard at first, she says, but instructive. In general, she prefers to speak of instructive experiences – never of bad ones. Instead she tells us about her ‘moment of glory’ when some of her students discovered the Pickmotion postcard with her motif in a bookstore. “And I had not even seen it myself, it was very funny,” she recalls.
She likes to take pictures spontaneously, thus, she always has her camera at hand. She likes to take long walks, to take photos, to let the thoughts wander and to absorb the environment. “I’m the Flâneuse,” she says, laughing. On her way to work or back, Nathalie always finds an opportunity to take pictures – especially in Stockholm, which to her is the most beautiful city in Scandinavia. Especially when foggy, the city is magical to her.
When asked what defines beauty, she answers, “If it’s too perfect, it’s not pretty. Then it’s just perfect. Too perfect.” It rather is the interplay of beauty and imperfection the creates beauty, says Nathalie, such as the cracks in the house facades in Italy and France, for example. Many German cities are therefore too perfect for her – with the exception of Berlin. For a moment she raves about the versatility of our capital, the presence of the many different styles. Here, too, it is the imperfection that gives the city its appeal: “It is a complicated balance between the ugly and the beautiful.”
Since five years she posts as @nathaliec136 on Instagram, almost every day. She especially enjoys the community, that she can count on the hospitality of other photographers, when she is traveling. But also the networking within Stockholm, with Swedish photographers. Her experiences with Instagram are almost all good ones and she met many people through the platform, she says. Nathalie tells us that she has been photographing since she was a child. That she stuck to it, perhaps partly due to her lack in skills for drawing and painting she admits. When she talks about photography, though, it sounds like it’s a piece of cake – the feeling for the right composition and imagery comes naturally to her. We ask her what photography means to her. “It’s a passion. It is much more than a hobby. A hobby, that’s what you do once a week. I take pictures every day!”
