No AI. Just me and a questionable sense of adventure. 🙃 Another year older, still choosing abandoned buildings over sensible birthday plans. Real places. Real exploring. Real fun!

F*ck AI. I shot these on Polaroid SX-70. No prompts. No pixels pretending to be real. Just instant film, imperfect moments, and the magic of watching a photograph come to life. Real film. Real moments. No artificial anything.

WHAT I SEE 👀 VS. WHAT I SHOOT 📷 — PART 3 An abandoned building holds a thousand stories. Sometimes, you just have to look closer. Same place. Hidden details. A different perspective. 👀 Did you spot it before the close-up?

WHAT I SEE 👀 VS. WHAT I SHOOT 📷 — PART 2 Sometimes, the most interesting photographs are hiding in plain sight. What I see is an entire room. What I shoot is one small detail within it. Abandoned places are full of stories, you just have to slow down enough to notice them. The frame shows what caught my eye. The close-up shows what I chose to capture. Would you have seen it too?

WHAT I SEE 👀 VS. WHAT I SHOOT 📷 — PART 1 I see a detail. I frame a story. On an abandoned location, there’s often so much happening at once: forgotten objects, textures, light and layers of decay. But sometimes, you only need to look a little closer. The first image is what caught my eye. The second is what I chose to photograph. Same place. Completely different perspective. Would you have noticed this detail?

Still a little proud seeing Light hanging on the wall at Frayme’s exhibition at De Hallen Amsterdam. So special to see it surrounded by so many talented international analoge photographers and even better to meet some of them in person, hear their stories and share our passion for photography. Thank you, @fraymemagazine, for this opportunity. 🤍

Light will be on exhibition in Amsterdam! Some photographs find their way a little further than you expected. My analogue photograph Light has been selected for the Frayme book, featuring the work of so many talented photographers. And now, it’s leaving the pages of the book and becoming part of the exhibition at De Hallen Amsterdam. Seeing my analogue photograph that started as a frame on film become a printed image in a book, and then a photograph on a gallery wall, feels pretty special. 🤍 📖 Published in the Frayme book 🖼️ On view at the Frayme exhibition 📍 De Hallen Amsterdam 📅 Opening weekend: 25–27 September

There’s something about slowing down. Exploring abandoned places with a film camera makes you see things differently. You wait for the light, look for the details and take your time before pressing the shutter. These are some of the moments behind my exploration and the analogue photographs that came from it. No endless shots. No instant preview. Just an abandoned place and a little patience.

Hi! 👋🏻 I’m Marieke, the face behind Secrets to Yesterday, and I photograph what time leaves behind. I’m drawn to abandoned places, architecture, forgotten places, and the histories they hold. I’m fascinated by what once happened there and how time has changed them. I can’t photograph the past, but I can photograph what remains. The architecture. The light. Forgotten objects. Worn surfaces. The quiet marks left by time. In a world that keeps moving faster, becoming increasingly digital and AI-driven, I choose to slow down. To look closer. To go back to the basics. And I choose imperfection. In the places I photograph, in the grain and unpredictability of film, and sometimes in the final image itself. It doesn’t have to be flawless to be meaningful. For me, a photograph is perfect when it makes someone stop, look closer and wonder what once was. That’s what I want my photographs to do: preserve what remains. And there are some exciting things coming up. 👀 New projects, new opportunities and plenty more stories to capture. If you’re new here, welcome! If you’ve been here for a while, thank you for staying. This is What Remains. 🖤 Photo: Yara den Houdijker