Martin Styblo is a media designer and photographer based in Cologne, Germany. He comes from the punk scene of the 1970s and began photographing the city and its people. He developed his own films and made his own prints. Using the developer the wrong way gave his pictures high contrast and grain.
In 2018 a flood destroyed all his prints, negatives and hard drives, covering about 40 years of work. He started again. His photo essay on the Ghost Parade in Cologne (February 2025) covers an annual night march of masked figures with drums and no cars or electronic music. He used a Nikon Z5 with a 28mm f/1.4 lens in available light. He edits in Photoshop and Silver Efex in black and white, and calls himself more a scene or documentary photographer than a street photographer.
