Stone on Stone

Lund Cathedral Photos by Stefan Stenudd

Lund Cathedral, Sweden, 2002.

When I have strolled around in the old university town Lund, I pondered the idea of taking photos of its stones — in the pavement, on the houses. There is a lot of stone in Lund, and they do tell of centuries. Maybe they are symbols of age, simply.

The cathedral in Lund is certainly old enough, stemming from Medieval times. So I found myself taking photos of only that building. It had enough stones.

On the photo above, it is seen through the window of a building next to it, but for the rest of the pictures I went much closer to the cathedral — so close, in fact, that I found stone on stone, but not the structure in its entirety.

I have a tendency to do that with my camera — get so close that the details are seen, but not the overall picture. Here those details are exclusively stones, but otherwise an old saying might apply, the one about the trees standing in the way of seeing the forest.

We tend to take the details for granted, so that they become next to invisible. Normally we focus on the whole structures, and not what they are made up of. That's how our perception works. From childhood, we learn to disregard the details. Let's do the opposite, for a moment.

Stefan Stenudd