Photographer's Profile

Marlena Wels

Germany

Born in 1993 at the coast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Germany, I grew up seeing my little world as a huge playground for stories. The old garden shed was my witch cabin, the attic provided me with countless dusty treasures and my mother’s thrown out dresses became gowns for princesses. And well, I fear my life hasn’t changed that much. My interest for photography slowly grew in my early teenage years and became more serious, when I did an internship at a local photostudio when I was 15. Back then I bought my first camera and played around with it for many years. Years full of experimenting with selfportraiture, editing and composing. Later I studied Multimedia Production at the University of Applied Sciences in Kiel, where I was able to implement photography in various projects and analysed the effects of stories combined with selfportraiture for the mental health. I still wander around the house, collecting treasures, creating costumes to tell stories of princesses or witches. I love to visualize fairytales and poems. But I also love to wander around my soul, to look into the dark and hidden parts, the ones that hurt and prefer to be forgotten. I turn them into stories, into concepts, into photography. And with that I use to wove them into my own story, to make them a part of me.