Castleton is a touristic town in the heart of Peak District - the first national park in the United Kingdom. It lies in Hope Valley, with white rock to the south and black to the north.
As a couple in our twenties we somehow decided to trade in the city life for quiet countryside and see a different life for a change. We rented a tiny cottage in a village with one bakery, one post office and hundreds of sheep.
The temperamental nature of our stay there gave me motivation to create my first ever photographic project. I knew that the long walks I took almost every day allow me to see something different in Castleton. Something that tourists can't see and you cannot find on the internet. Believe me, that on those little lanes every stone wall has a long story and nature hides its pastoral beauty behind every corner.
Evenings in the Peaks were always very special to me. The smell of the pastures and moors was strong and pesky tourist were already gone. It is then, that the distance between rational and magical realities was the smallest. The mixture of natural and artificial light on my photographs seemed to me the most fitting technique to paint this village. A frontier between old and new, between nature and civilisation.
Maybe one day I will have a courage to visit Castelton again. Maybe all I saw there is already in these pictures.
