Where landscapes meet

Some places stay with you long after you’ve left. For me, it began in Australia and New Zealand, where I lived for five years among rainforests, mountains and the ocean. Since then, every journey has added new places, from the coast of Portugal to a mountain lake in Poland. MadyMadlin is where I bring them home.

I'm Madlen Duderstedt, a photographer and artist based in Berlin. I got my first camera from my grandfather, and I've been looking at the world through a lens ever since. My background in graphic design still shapes how I see: in lines, rhythm, and balance.

In 2015 I left Germany with a one-way ticket to Australia. I spent five years there and in New Zealand, and some days it felt like living inside a picture book. The landscapes were already perfect, so I started asking a different question: what if I let them meet? Through digital double exposure, two or three places become one. Through mirroring, a crater lake or a forest floor turns into a symmetry that nature only hints at.

Nature is full of that kind of hidden order: petals in threes, fives, and eights, spirals that follow the Fibonacci sequence. Maybe that's why these images feel calm, even when their colours are bold.

In 2019, one picture of my aerial series Silent Flight, photographed from a glider high above New Zealand, was named a finalist for New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year and the series became my first solo exhibition in Arrowtown. Exactly ten years after that one-way flight, I opened Between Realities in Berlin, with images where places, times, and moods overlap. It felt like coming full circle. My latest series, Body of Nature, merges five self-portraits with landscapes, one for each element: fire, water, earth, air, and ether.

Why I make this

Being out in nature has always done something to me. It slows me down, clears my head, and reminds me that I'm part of something bigger. I want that feeling to be possible at home, too. Every print and every blanket carries a real place and its story, made to be looked at, touched, and lived with. If it gives you a little of what these places gave me, it has found the right home.

Why MadyMadlin?

It was my nickname at art school, and it stuck.

What I make

Fine art prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, a 100% cotton paper made for museums. And woven cotton blankets that live between art and everyday life: hang them on the wall, or wrap yourself in them on the couch. We only have this one planet, so I choose natural materials and quality over quantity.

Work with me

Besides prints for your walls, I love creating art together with others: for hotels, practices and offices, for album and book covers, or as a brand-new piece for a project of yours. If something comes to mind, have a look at how we can work together.

+  Collaborations