|
|
Artist's Statement
For quite a few years, my main focus was on the role of photographer as alien, roaming the city, camera and notebook in hand, exploring, shooting, writing, and later, sometimes much later, selecting the photographs to be worked into either imaginary commentaries or stories. I like to see the resulting photographs and books as the documentation of seeing itself, and it seemed natural for me to name my first self-published photobook “Reflections in an Alien’s Eye”.
Recently a second strand has developed in that the focus of my photography has shifted towards fictitious portraits and staging the scenes for them. It started with “Think Pink”, an on-going project about a colourful utopia, a work that depends on finding props, moods and situations and on motivating friends and strangers alike to open themselves up to disguise and play-acting. This type of work requires often quite elaborate preparations but this is only one aspect of it. The second aspect is, equally importantly, spontaneous improvisation in front of the camera. Each shot becomes the result of an improvised play in miniature, in a fine balance of planning and coincidence. In this type of photography, I am certainly still the eye, but it is a variety of roles that I enjoy now, being communicator, casting agent, stage designer, theatre director, camera operator and stills photographer, all rolled into one. And, last but not least, there is a third aspect that I have come to love exploring: the interaction of beauty and humour.
For me, creating photographs and photobooks are two almost inseparable activities, and book design in its many guises has become a source of constant fascination. There are lots of bookworks popping around in my head, and their number keeps growing, depending on what inspires me. Thank goodness I get inspired by anything and my notebooks get filled quite easily: a colour, a sudden memory, a musical beat, a few words in a foreign language, an article I read, a movie I see or an exhibition I go to, or a photobook by another artist. I don’t remember what exactly it was that inspired “Bruno Is a Celebrity”, my latest book, but I do remember that I noted down my first ideas on the character in the summer of 2015 and that I started reading up on people such as Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian and their careers and lifestyles at around the same time. I have been making notes on Bruno and his world ever since, and I don’t think I’ll stop doing that any time soon.
Almost anything is important as a tool to free myself for new perspectives, for imagining the things that were not there before, or modifying the ones that were. After discovering by chance that Japanese masking paper can be used in a way similar to watercolour,
I started painting, as it were, some of my photographs and photobooks with it. Since this is a method which makes for radical changes to the photography, I am often creating double editions now. I intend to make many more experiments, the crazier the better, in order to invent new shapes for my book objects and new presentation modes for my images.
April 2017
Recently a second strand has developed in that the focus of my photography has shifted towards fictitious portraits and staging the scenes for them. It started with “Think Pink”, an on-going project about a colourful utopia, a work that depends on finding props, moods and situations and on motivating friends and strangers alike to open themselves up to disguise and play-acting. This type of work requires often quite elaborate preparations but this is only one aspect of it. The second aspect is, equally importantly, spontaneous improvisation in front of the camera. Each shot becomes the result of an improvised play in miniature, in a fine balance of planning and coincidence. In this type of photography, I am certainly still the eye, but it is a variety of roles that I enjoy now, being communicator, casting agent, stage designer, theatre director, camera operator and stills photographer, all rolled into one. And, last but not least, there is a third aspect that I have come to love exploring: the interaction of beauty and humour.
For me, creating photographs and photobooks are two almost inseparable activities, and book design in its many guises has become a source of constant fascination. There are lots of bookworks popping around in my head, and their number keeps growing, depending on what inspires me. Thank goodness I get inspired by anything and my notebooks get filled quite easily: a colour, a sudden memory, a musical beat, a few words in a foreign language, an article I read, a movie I see or an exhibition I go to, or a photobook by another artist. I don’t remember what exactly it was that inspired “Bruno Is a Celebrity”, my latest book, but I do remember that I noted down my first ideas on the character in the summer of 2015 and that I started reading up on people such as Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian and their careers and lifestyles at around the same time. I have been making notes on Bruno and his world ever since, and I don’t think I’ll stop doing that any time soon.
Almost anything is important as a tool to free myself for new perspectives, for imagining the things that were not there before, or modifying the ones that were. After discovering by chance that Japanese masking paper can be used in a way similar to watercolour,
I started painting, as it were, some of my photographs and photobooks with it. Since this is a method which makes for radical changes to the photography, I am often creating double editions now. I intend to make many more experiments, the crazier the better, in order to invent new shapes for my book objects and new presentation modes for my images.
April 2017