Missing The Ocean In Vienna
Nadine Cordial Settele lives and works in Vienna and photographed many portraits for us.We actually wanted to write a brief profile about our photographer Nadine, but once we read what she responded to our questions we simply couldn’t add a thing. Read for yourself:
"A photo is often better than the truth."
With some of my photos I can’t really add much more. I make photos because I’m more a visual person and simply can better express many things through photography. I like it when the images speak for themselves and every observer sees something else in them. And indeed, that’s often better than the truth. Sometimes the most wonderful, romantic photos emerge in a fight or behind a highway gas station. It’s the illusion that often makes things special.
I have Filipino and German roots and grew up in Ulm. Soon I am going to travel to the Philippines, where I have a huge family. It is sort of my home but nevertheless everything is so new each time. I can hardly wait to make photographs there. A different light, different colors and people, who mean a lot to me.
I studied international economics, which also led me to Paris and Vancouver for a time. That was nice, but I always look forward to coming back home, to Vienna. You can simply feel that this city has seen so much. The list of what you can discover in the realm of art and culture is endless. And then Vienna has this character that’s not just nice and pretty. It will never become boring. I liked moving here, and now five years later I still don’t regret it.
"I have an urge to freeze moments."
Vienna constantly surprises me – for example, I recently went to the Cemetery of the Nameless (Friedhof der Namenlosen), where I encountered a group of people with a lot of white flowers. The flow of people simply didn’t end. Then they put the flowers in the water. That was really impressive. I found out later that a memorial service is organized each year for those who drowned in the Danube.
The only thing Vienna is really missing out, is the ocean. The Danube Island is nice, but it is simply not the same. The air and the wind on the ocean are just different, and I miss it every second.
I prefer analog photography over digital – I can’t really say why. Analog photos seem “right” to me, like how I imagine them in my head. I have an urge to freeze moments in the form of photos so I can look at them later in peace. Only after I have made photos do I have an intense memory of what I experienced. Already as a child I would always pause the television so I could have a precise look at everything – maybe that was the same.
