The ‘About’ page. The one who clicks on it wanted it that way and thus, what I wrote here will not remain undiscovered at the end.

The decision to rebuild the website was finally also taken for the reason to get more reactions and feedback and certainly also to let you look a little bit behind the scenes or simply to avoid unanswered questions.

X’tro’polis

I am sometimes asked, rather casually, for what reason I actually chose the name ‘Xtropolis’. The name was born in 2001. The name should be a fantasy name so that my photos were not associated to anything and could mostly be seen as anonymous. The option “first name and surname” died pretty fast.

In either case, the name should contain an ‘X’.
The letter ‘X’  – without any context – stands for a large number of words or hints.
Anyway the letter ‘X’ is just like a placeholder that, used in this way, stands for something unwritten, something unsaid, unknown, eXplicit.

The ‘X’ as a shape has for me some sort of minimum and also balanced design.
In a serifless font, the ‘X’ seems unpleasantly ’jagged’ and does not really leave a soft impression. It will be hard to place something biomorphic in front of this shape. In simple words:  If someone wants to draw a barbed wire on a piece of paper, he cannot avoid the crossed lines of the “X”. Furthermore, the X is axis-symmetric. Two separated parts that become one entity. These and some other thoughts leaded to the fact that the new name must contain an “X” in a precise position.

As a consequence, space was created by the ‘X’, space for lots of ideas with unknown character. There was still something missing which would give some vastness to the whole thing. The syllable ‘-polis’ stands for: many, folk but also town. When I was talking to a friend about old movies, we somehow ended up with ‘Metropolis’. The futuristic, oversized, extra huge but at the same time also the depressing, excluding and dramatic nature has brought my thoughts back to searching for a name.
In order to place the full stop correctly behind this sentence: it is a silent film. To relate to the first paragraph, the syllable -polis sounds soft enough to repress the jags of the ‘X’.
Conclusion: Xtropolis.