Holocaust Memorial, Berlin. Officially called the 'Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe' (Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), this 'field of stelae' – designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman – is set on an undulating site 100 metres south of the Brandenberg Gate, in the centre of Berlin. It opened in 2005 after a long and often controversial planning and building process. The 2,711 concrete blocks (stelae) are arranged in a regular grid over an area of nearly five acres. Each is around 8 feet long and 3 feet wide, but they vary in height from a few inches up to nearly 16 feet. At first the arrangement appears uniform, but closer inspection shows that each block is at a slight angle to its neighbour, creating a feeling of uncertainty.

Walking among the tall blocks at the centre felt disorientating and claustrophobic, despite a clear exit path: indeed, Eisenman has said that the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and that "the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason". I wanted to photograph the memorial without the certainty and comfort and busyness of the modern world around it, so most of my images taken over nearly an hour used a long lens to exclude surrounding streets. The weather was dull and the lighting flat.

Technical: NIKON D300, f=200.0 mm, ISO640, 1/250 sec @ f8.0

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