sv6
Think: North
I am inspired by the rough wilderness of the North. Mountains, forests, ice. I have a soft spot for semi-urban places in which the processes of erosion and growth are visible. I depict the scenes that I photograph in a very matter of fact way, emphasizing the often surreal sights. The abandoned sites do not offer a promise of a return. I do not find this pessimistic; the way nature regenerates itself is very positive and brings forth optimism. Rather, I want to underline the way in which nature strikes back, nature always wins.
The relationship between natural phenomena and technologies is an ongoing subject of exploration for me. I investigate the intersections of nature and culture and the modes in which mankind harnesses and exploits – or attempts to control – natural phenomena. How do we look at animals and nature? What is nature? How is the impact of technologies visible in the environment?
An important factor for me is the questioning of how and why we look at the environment in which we live in, what filters our ways of looking and perceiving. I am interested in an ambivalent aesthetic, the simultaneity of attractiveness and repulsiveness, the synthetic and the organic, stark geometry and the ornamental. Creating contradictions rather than smooth entities.
My visits to Svalbard Islands in the High North, 2013, 2015, 2022 and 2024 have been meaningful in terms of understanding northern locations. My topics have included ice and geology as well as remains of mining industry in Pyramiden. it is an abandoned coal mine community established by the Soviet Union, and in Barentsburg, also established by the Soviet Union, which still maintains some mining activity by a small community of Russians.