For where I went I did not know the rituals and customs. It was a language without word or gestures. But they understood each other. They knew were to go and how to go about it.
There is that strange feeling that you suddenly enter a world but you can’t speak the language nor understand it’s culture. The still life photo, (if you can call it that) started with an innocent placement of a stone. But the stone became a story.
A setting of a stone age ritual started to take place.
What kind of ritual it was, it was out of control. Although I started it, helped to create it, my influence was gone.
A story started to emerge . Stones became individual characters. The whole constellation of objects started to turn into a movie set. A thousands of years age old shelter. Or cave with unknown dwellers, ready to explore. You can imagine the soundtrack of the movie when you look at the photo.
But one thing suddenly became clear to me. And that was that the world I helped to create started to live their own life. The dead scenery suddenly starts to live. the dead materials are suddenly still alive. As a still life.
The whole process of world building in front of the camera is a mysterious process. It starts with finding the objects. Collecting them and bringing them together. After the installation is set up. I take a lot of pictures to find the right angle and lightning. After I’ve pushed the button I edit the digital file to bring out some highlights and deepen some shadows.
This is the technical part, and actually the most boring part to talk about. But during the time of the photo shoot and the editing I really start to get to know the installation. Like a person you just met on a first date, you find yourself connected or not. And during this conversation is were the magic happens.
The process of making these still life photos is still mysterious to me, and that’s what so intriguing. Discovering new worlds.
