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OLA RINDAL
PARIS (L—B. 009)

What tend to catch Ola Rindal’s eye in the »Paris« photo series is not the city’s most obvious optical attractions but the gaps in the urban fabric. His is a not a subjectively imagined Paris. It is a Paris that exists in the real world, albeit at the edge of our field of vision. Vaguely familiar but not immediately recognizable, the side of Paris that come into view here is its non-places.

We may encounter these blank or blind spots in any big city. Casually and fleetingly noticing their presence we seldom pay them very much attention. In »Paris« Rindal turns his camera at these spots to get a grasp of what goes on there. What he captures is the daily struggle for survival waged by the city’s poor and fallen — the human collateral chewed up and spat out by the big city machine.

»Paris« is not a socialrealist depiction of street life, however. Like Eugène Atget, the legendary late 19th century photographer of Paris, Rindal approaches his subject in a way that perhaps best is described as forensic. His gaze is naturally drawn to the things, buildings and people that suggest a different physiognomy of Paris than the one we have become accustomed to. Homing in on cracks and fissures in his surroundings his depiction hints at the presence of violent forces beneath the city’s civilized surface.

Many of the images in »Paris« evoke the sense of vulnerability that may overcome us when walking urban streets. This feeling of being exposed to an unpredictable outside is a recurring motif in Rindal’s overall work. It is present in the dark Parisian alleys of the »Night Light« series and in »Tokyo Flower«, which traced nature’s ability to survive on Tokyo’s concrete pavements. Here the outside is the broken, sometimes harsh urban reality that defines life for many people. At the same time these images contain what Walter Benjamin called »sparks of contingency« that grant them an urgent poetic quality.

Each image in the »Paris« series lends, in its own singular way, a language to that which is without means of expression. Whether we are witnessing a sleeping homeless man or a discarded building, their existence is calmly acknowledged as something that creates a crack in a city’s idealised image of itself. If there is a moral in these images it might be: the interspaces of our concrete jungle are populated by neglected people, and we look away because deep down we fear that one day we could be one of them.

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MARTINA HOOGLAND IVANOW
SATELLITE + CIRCULAR WAIT (L—B. 008)

Martina Hoogland Ivanow’s images often evoke an acute feeling of something indefinite going on. In her photographic series Satellite (2009-2010) two women sit upright on sun chairs smeared in clay. Their faces are turned away from the camera towards a third person, whose legs we observe in the upper left corner of the image. But the final piece of the puzzle that might explain what we are witnessing is tantalisingly out of reach. We cannot even be sure that there is indeed such a thing as a missing explanatory element. Our optical mastery of the image’s narrative is short-circuited by the force field that Hoogland Ivanow’s framing and subtle play with light and shadow creates. We are left with a muted mystery felt on an emotional rather than logical level.

»I reduce until only a whisper remains,« Hoogland Ivanow says about her editing method. At first this sounds pretty straightforward. Hoogland Ivanow’s photography has always transcended the border between realism and fiction; and being reducible to neither one nor the other, it is not hard to imagine that her image making must require meticulous editing to tease out an essence. Her use of an acoustic metaphor is therefore apt since it implies the necessity of removing noise until only a core of visual truth remains.

That is all very well. But it does not do full justice to what it is like to experience her images firsthand. The catch in the quote is that little word »whisper«. Saturated with more meaning than it may at first suggest, »whisper« provides an insight into the mystery of Hoogland Ivanow’s art.

The whisper is akin to breathing. It can be seductive but also eerie. Think, for instance, of the uncanny whispers that reverberate throughout the soundtrack of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror masterpiece Suspiria. To perceive a whisper in a photographic image is of course acoustically impossible. But taken as a metaphor for the fragile it is possible to see Hoogland Ivanow’s aesthetic practice as one of making room for the barely perceptible. This presupposes a kind of emphatic, listening attitude. A finely attuned ear. What Hoogland Ivanow tunes up in her images is in a way what Roland Barthes once called the punctum of a photo: that singular aspect of an image that touches the viewer without becoming reduced to a message or a thing.

A case in point is the photo depicting three hunters walking across a mown lawn in Hoogland Ivanow’s photographic series Circular Wait. Appearing against the evening light as silhouettes with long, sharp shadows, the trio’s internal atmosphere is intriguing. The posture of the man to the left is relaxed to the point of lazy, while the man in the middle walks with a focused, almost arrogant resolve. The stance of the man to the right is more ambiguous. His step appears a bit hesitant. Is he captured in a moment of doubt? Or rather of contemplation? We cannot say for sure.

What Hoogland Ivanow skilfully brings out here is the vagueness of the relationship between the three men. She makes the space between them tangible. The unclear social dynamics that characterise this image can be seen as the image’s punctum. Like a memory of something whispered in a dream, it is this quality of Hoogland Ivanow’s art that lingers in our mind long after we think we have decoded her images.

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JOHAN SANDBERG — VALLE D'AOSTA
(L—B. 007)

Decontextualised almost to the point of abstraction the brushwood in Johan Sandberg’s latest photo book provides the viewer with few geographical clues as to where the images were shot. The only pointer available is the title, which suggests that we are in Valle D’Aosta, an Alpine valley in the northwestern corner of Italy.

Shadowed by some of the tallest, most mythical mountains in Europe — Mont Blanc, Gran Paradiso, Monte Rosa and the pyramidal Matterhorn — Valle D’Aosta is the smallest, least populous region of Italy and consequently one of the country’s most isolated ones. Even though it has its fair share of yearly tourists the way most people experience it is as a series of cinematically shifting views from a train.

This is how Sandberg first encountered the seemingly dead forest presented in the »Valle D’Aosta« photo series. Traveling back and forth between his homebase Milan and Paris to see the girl he just had met there a few years ago he started to notice the eerie beauty of the forest, especially in the winter before the trees blossomed. For a long time the image of the forest lingered in his memory until he one day in February 2013 decided to make a stop and capture it with his camera.

The visual token of that stop is what meets the viewer’s eye in »Valle D’Aosta«. Like a silent answer to a question long since forgotten, the images have a pictorial, if not precisely picturesque, quality to them. Monochromic with vague hues of green, they could be seen as examples of a new kind of nature photography that brings forth mythologies and triggers the viewer’s associations to forests perhaps encountered in children’s books.

Sandberg’s choice of distance between lens and object as well the consistently (some would perhaps say obsessively) narrow framing lends these images their abstract quality. This is not a pure document of a typical Alpine forest but a highly subjective, photographically rendered and chopped-up forest. Fed by all the other imagined or remembered forests that exist in Sandberg’s own mind, the brushwood in »Valle D’Aosta« deepens, rather than explains, the enigma of nature.

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OLA RINDAL — TOKYO FLOWERS
(L—B. 006)

Attentive and precise Ola Rindal’s lens reveal textures in our daily surroundings. This proves especially true in his new work »Tokyo Flowers« which can be seen as an aesthetically sensitive survey of the sporadic and sometimes fragile presence of nature in the form of flowers in the Japanese capital.

Made during two trips to Tokyo in May 2013, »Tokyo Flowers« is a continuation of Rindal’s fascination with the blind spots of the urban environment, the things that are always there but tend to escape our gaze. In the »Night, Light« series (L—B. 003) literal blind shots in the dark was a way of discovering what is always present in the streets of Paris but seen in a new way. »Tokyo Flowers« employs a different method but to a similar purpose. Here the intimate framing scales up the rich flora of the Japanese capital’s sidewalks, revealing nature’s relentless growth regardless of the circumstances. Floral life pops through the cracks of concrete and tarmac beneath our line of vision.

Rindal’s images are not idealisations or a celebrations of nature. His photographic gaze is much more »objective« than that. Rather, »Tokyo Flowers« investigates the half-hidden textures, materials and forms of flowers and concrete that characterise parts of Tokyo’s identity as place. A study of the commonplace, of the half-out-of-sight, so to speak, this results in a photographic grammar of urban nature.

The effect of Rindal’s approach is a kind of measured and simple psychogeographical strategy that directs the viewer’s gaze off the predictable and habitual path of the urban landscape, making the viewer aware of the different material and visual layers that co-exist in a city.

But there’s also a parallell, more personal story at play here. Tokyo is where the family of Rindal’s wife lives. His connection with Tokyo as a specific city and place is thus not touristic, which perhaps accounts for thediscovery of a pattern that is not immediately visible for the touristic gaze. The revelation of Tokyo’s flowers probably requires the relaxed rhythm of moving through the city that characterises the citizen who is both an outsider and at home in the city. »Tokyo Flowers« is consequently the outcome of a familiarity with a place which has not yet turned into habituated seeing. The resident alien that Rindal is in Tokyo makes him a precise observer of the networks and semi-hidden interconnections of the city’s minutiae.

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ROBERT NETTARP — 1970 – 2002
(L—B. 005)

From a fashion perspective, the nineties meant a shift on many levels. Fashion photographers, as well as other practitioners, started to engage with fashion in a critical and self-reflexive way, turning, as Sophie von Olfers suggests in ”Not in Fashion” from 2010, ”the magazine into an active platform for cultural dialogue.” Instead of reproducing stereotypical fashion imagery as expected by the fashion system (or logic of the fashion industry), they became authors in their own right, blurring the lines between fashion, art and other creative disciplines. Like artists, fashion photographers began embracing their own subjectivity and acting out of personal concerns, addressing issues that traditionally had not been part of their professional repertoire.

Even though the increased diversity of individual voices within the field makes generalization difficult, fashion photography in the nineties nevertheless displays some common features. As a reaction to the cult of extravagant glamour and the exclusive object during the previous decade, many photographers were moving towards reality (which, of course, in fashion usually is a staged reality), creating pictures in a documentary style to deconstruct and negotiate the borders between fashion and everyday life. Another significant feature was the adoption of digital technology. By applying software as a tool for visual expression, photographers effectively transformed the dynamics of image making, destabilizing the relation between physical reality (as viewed through the camera) and appearance.

Irrespective of visual strategy, much of the imagery evoked a sense of darkness, which has been explored in depth by caroline evans in ”Fashion at the Edge” from 2003. By freeing themselves from demands to be prescriptive, fashion photographers could suddenly deal with the whole spectrum of human experience, positive as well as negative aspects. More often than not, the imagery was ambiguous. Evans talks of themes within fashion ”at the borders of beauty and horror, where sex and death intersected with commerce.” Avoiding idealizing, fashion photographers and their collaborators used their voices to articulate anxieties against a backdrop of rapid changes in society during this time. But they also constructed new meaning and imagery, using their creativity as a positive force to outline radical visions of new, alternative realities, without leaving the fashion context.

Robert Nettarp’s work reflects the transition towards a more subjective and equivocal fashion photography in the nineties. At his sudden death at age 32, the swedish fashion photographer was celebrated as a truly creative influence in the industry. Using digital means to distort, twist and subvert reality, Nettarp challenged ideas about perfection, as in ”Åse Beautiful Pain”, probably his most renowned picture, where the model’s face is covered by fake bruises. He also raised questions about sexuality, violence and gender with imagery fuelled by a disturbing, dark energy, or a camp, wicked attitude: heads wrapped in transparent plastic or close-fitting balaclavas, a model sticking her tongue out to the camera, naked or semi-naked bodies in surreal settings, often processed in the computer studio.

Above all, Nettarp didn’t want the surface to take over. Things had to be broken down, perverted, to reveal deeper layers, an emotional state. Or in his own words: ”whipped up”, digitally reconfigured. Perhaps this is also his biggest legacy, the art of retouching as a way to visualize on the outside what takes place on the inside. If the mood is dark, that’s because he exposed the imperfections, what’s usually hidden, denied or repressed. By using fashion as a space for personal intervention and digital tools as means of communication, he made the invisible visible – a discomforting scratch on the perfect exterior.

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MARTINA HOOGLAND IVANOW — SPEEDWAY
(L—B. 004)

In the frozen dead of night a group of speedway riders circles a dirt track. Gathered under the racetrack lights in an almost ceremonial fashion, they seem like a secret society engaged in an enigmatic ritual. Yet, any clear answer about what we are actually witnessing keeps slipping away, like rain on a windshield.

This is the darkly opaque universe that Martina Hoogland Ivanow’s »Speedway« beckons us to enter. A world of minimal molecular motion. A landscape of ice, snow, dirt and night. One in which shadowy speedway bikers – almost as an afterthought – seemingly race to outduel the overwhelming forces of nature rather than compete with each other. Perhaps just to keep themselves warm. But nature is indifferent and unforgiving. It keeps on winning, forever on the verge of turning everything into an arrested state of ice and darkness.

Moving from one image to the next we hope to get closer to the real action. But the deeper we immerse ourselves into this universe the slacker the ties to the real world become, allowing the fictional dimension of photography to take hold. The unfamiliar overlaps the familiar. Without realizing it we find ourselves in a twilight zone where reality meets the dream and the drivers turn into leather-clad, one-gear, no-brake ghost riders.

The primal scene of Hoogland Ivanow’s images is a fitting metaphor for the estranging effect that »Speedway« has on the viewer. The race track is after all a loop where the start and finish are arbitrary points. Working along the lines of this logic, Hoogland Ivanow’s images tell a circular story without a determinable beginning or end. The viewer ultimately decides exactly where this story starts and finishes, with every such decision being radically subjective and provisional.

Thus, if there were an ideal way to navigate through the Möbius-like trajectory of »Speedway«, it would probably be a kind of sideways approach. Viewing the images can start anywhere and follow its own particular rhythm, decreasing and increasing the speed of viewing, not unlike the speedway racers themselves broadsiding into the bends of a race track. The story ends when you turn your gaze away from the images. Glancing at them again you soon realise that a new story has already begun to unfold.

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OLA RINDAL — NIGHT, LIGHT
(L—B. 003)

The visual territory we enter in Ola Rindal’s »Night, Light« brings to mind retrieved data from a black box. Washed out snapshots of potentially unsettling situations at night, captured with the scrupulous indifference of a machine. Rindal’s images appear to be saved from the archival night of an abandoned camera. It’s almost like found footage of undefined, dark corners of reality.

Random and controlled in character, the images are riddled with an acute sense of danger. And they all display a recurrent pattern: the immediacy and surprise of encountering the unknown. They seem to be, quite literally, shots in the dark.

No wonder the impression we get from the »Night, Light« series is of someone groping in the dark, guided by the occasional flash of the camera. These are images triggered by someone who’s anxiously anticipating what the camera will reveal.

»Night, light« seems to exploit the tension between the fear of seeing and the fear of what’s hidden from our view. This dynamic takes on a different meaning depending on whether we’re confronted with urban darkness or nature’s murkiness. Rindal’s photographic approach to the city and nature is the same but the ultimate effect differs.

We become night-goggle spies on what the darkness hides from our view. And yet, what we see doesn’t fully appease us. Under the photographically lifted veil of darkness a mystery still remains.

In the images that evidently originate from a big city we are given hints of life off the social grid. It’s a walk on the dark side. A world peopled by street gangs, vagrants and hustlers, where the intentions of others are shady – at least these are the stereotypes our imagination comes up with. We become lonely nightwalkers halting at what appears to be empty places and blind alleys. Experiencing the vulnerability one feels when walking at night in places we do not know.

Gently pushed out of the city center into the woods, we are confronted with the dead calm of nature. Its tranquility tends to stimulate the fantasy of the monstrous, something which children’s books like the Grimm Brothers’ Hansel and Gretel taps into. And it’s hard not to let one’s imagination run wild and read Wicca religion, primitive rituals or witchcraft into these images of nature.

However, they are completely devoid of any visual manifestation of the occult. Rindal clearly knows that the fundamentally expressionless character of nature is what makes it a mystery. In the end, the only thing we can say about it is that it is an enigma.

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FRODE & MARCUS — BEEKEEPER
(L—B. 002)

In the backwoods of a deserted landscape a man is busy conducting bizarre experiments on bees. He views himself as their protector and caretaker. But there’s something unnerving about his methods. His intentions are literally veiled as we never see his face. A faint post-apocalyptic aura hangs over it all. Everything is marked by slow decay. Between sudden fits of anger and excitement lethargy seems to come over him. Long lost in his own universe, the man goes about his business oblivious to the outside world. If such a world even exists.

It’s impossible to say who the man we meet in Frode&Marcus photo novel ›Beekeeper‹ actually is. This is one of many enigmas that the novel won’t give away. In all its ambiguity this carefully constructed tale of isolation, disorder and new becomings asks us to descend into the deepest layers of our subconscious.

Thus, any possible explanation as to the identity of the story’s anti-hero is perpetually kept on hold. He could be part of a shady military experiment gone wrong or an outcast from a strange tribe of woodsmen. And if this is an interior journey through a muddled mind that we’ve embarked on, well it’s very hard to say, since the only thing to go on is the visual manifestations of the beekeeper’s state of mind.

Despite the omnipresence of an almost romantic sunlight reminiscent of Aleksandr Sukorov’s hallucinatory 1987 film ›Days of Eclipse‹, ›Beekeeper‹ is touched by an undercurrent of catastrophe that gradually contaminates everything. Most of all, it appears to have taken hold of the man’s mind. The secret of bees seems to have given his existence an unclear purpose in this beautiful but isolated sun-tinged universe.

And this is crucial. Because in the end the big question raised here is existential. Every human being strives to establish some purpose in life. But what if purpose becomes an obsession that overtakes life? Determined to crack whatever the code of bees may be, the anti-hero of ›Beekeeper‹ leaves chaos in his wake.

The allure of the highly organized life of bees is, in a sense, understandable. Bees serve a greater purpose that the beekeeper seems to lack. They live, they play their part in reproduction with predictable monotony, they die. Clean and simple. The beekeeper, on the other hand, is an incarnation of the darkest forces of human nature. He is fallible, confused and lonely. He can never be sure that he has found his nirvana. In the end, to paraphrase Samuel Beckett, he can at the most hope to fail better the next time he tries to solve the mystery of the bees.

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HANS GEDDA — DEAD PLATES
(L—B. 001)

Hans Gedda is best known as a portrait photographer. Showing uncommon sensibility for people’s character, he captures their faces at the very moment when the internal and external become one. They are always expressive and personal. Something special must have taken place between model and photographer right there and then. It could be described as a disarming combination of trust and concentration.

Another and less recognised side of Hans Gedda’s work is his long-term interest in objects – or more precisely, still life. This well-established genre had one of its golden ages in Dutch painting of the Renaissance and Baroque. The motifs are at once strikingly sensual and saturated with symbolism that is more or less hidden. With a dazzling wealth of detail, they display the physical world’s visible and tactile surface. They awaken desire, but also open an abyss. The pictures bear witness to the fragility of life and remind the observer of the transient nature of all things.

The genre has been particularly important to photography. For reasons both practical and aesthetical, the very first photographs ever made show objects arranged to please the eye. The lengthy exposure times made static subjects a necessity, but it was also about finding an association to an established art form. Ever since, still life has been a lively photographic tradition. There is in Hans Gedda’s case, strong affinity, not least, to surrealism’s imagery and use of objects. In his works, things are combined and charged with meanings and expressions that they don’t have individually. Common objects are transformed when they perform on the stage where the still life takes place. For example, the scissors in Hans Gedda’s pictures are something completely different from those in the kitchen drawer. Frequently, the objects are characterised by an enigmatic charm and this is underlined further by unexpected encounters. Frequently, there is an interplay established between nature and culture. You could call his book a bestiary, but it is also reminiscent of a cabinet of curiosities. A collection of things, living and dead, that fascinate with their strangeness and beauty. These captivating characteristics may also be of the repulsive kind, which is often the case in these still lifes.

Hans Gedda is a photographer, however in this case the creative process begins with the arrangement of the objects. He literally constructs the pictures first and photographs them afterwards. Yet the objects aren’t everything. Nor the combinations. An absolutely crucial aspect is the light. Hans Gedda reads and utilises its possibilities to conjure up structures and surfaces, create density and space. Recognisable from the portraits is his skill in making use of the format and creating a picture that, regardless of motif, captures and holds the interest of the viewer.

NICLAS ÖSTLIND, CURATOR AND POSTGRADUATE OF THE SCHOOL OF PHOTGRAPHY.

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LIVRAISON N°4
OPEN LANDSCAPES — CLOSED ROOMS

>>For LIVRAISON N°4 we asked a selection of people we admire to explore private spaces, places of memory and topographies of the mind photographically and philosophically.<<

We were curious to understand what a place actually is and realized that the answer to this question is as manifold as it is subjective. Is it even possible to come up with a stable formula or definition of it? Or is what we understand as >place< a much more haunting, elusive entity?

The heterogenous mix of images and texts that we had the opportunity to compile for this issue seems to suggest the latter. The places and rooms of our lives are ghosts and they determine who we are to a much larger extent than we tend to give them credit for.

But as surely as night follows day, Livraison doesn’t limit itself to one form of expression. The secret personalites of some are perfectly complemented by the secret appearances of others. In Livraison III, 69 photographers, including Bela Borsodi, Helmut Lang, Sølve Sundsbø, Richard Burbridge and Viviane Sassen, manifest their visions of secret identities by using masks to conceal the real identity of their objects, create a sort of dualism, erase or enhance the person behind the mask and give birth to a new identity.

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ART CONTRIBUTORS: ADAM ETMANSKI, AMIRA FRITZ, ANNA KLEBERG, ANNIKA ASCHBERG, ANOUK KRUITHOF, ANUSCHKA BLOMMERS & NIELS SCHUMM, BELA BORSODI, BETTINA KHANO, BRENDAN AUSTIN, BRUNO AUGSBURGER, CAMILLE VIVIER, CARLOS ALBALÁ & IGNASI LÓPEZ, CHRISTIAN COINBERGH, COLLIER SCHORR, DAN TOBIN SMITH, DANIEL GUSTAV CRAMER, DAWID, EDGAR MARTINS, ELSPETH DIEDERIX, EMIL LARSSON, ERIK UNDÉHN, ERNST FISCHER, EVA FIORE KOVACOVSKY, EYAL PINKAS, FREDERIK LIEBERATH, FRODE & MARCUS, GERRY JOHANSSON, GUERRA DE LA PAZ, HANS GEDDA, JAAP SCHEEREN, JENNY KÄLLMAN, JENNY VAN SOMMERS, JH ENGSTRÖM, JOËL TETTAMANTI, JOHAN FOWELIN, JOHN DIVOLA, KÖRNER UNION, LINDA BERGMAN, MAGNUS MAGNUSSON, MAKIN JAN MA, MARC TURLAN, MARIANNE VIERØ, MARNIX GOOSSENS, MARTINA HOOGLAND IVANOW, Melanie Bonajo, MICHAEL WOLF, MYNE SØE — PEDERSEN, MYOUNG HO LEE, NAOYA HATAKEYAMA, NICHOLAS HUGHES, OLA BERGENGREN, OLA RINDAL, OLIVO BARBIERI, OSAMU KANEMURA, POPEL COUMOU, QIU YANG, RAPHAEL HEFTI, RYUJI MIYAMOTO, SHONA HEATH, STELLA FABER, STEPHANIE KLOSS, TARYN SIMON, THOMAS ADANK, THOMAS STRUTH, WALTER NIEDERMAYR, YOSHIHIKO UEDA, YOSUKE BANDAI AND YURI NAGAWARA.

WORD CONTRIBUTORS: ANDY GREENHOUSE, ANN-SOFI SIDÉN, ASTRID SYLWAN, CHARLOTTE GYLLENHAMMAR, DAN SNAITH, DAVY ROTHBART, GORM HEEN, HOWARD SHORE, LUKE RHEINHART, MUFFY GAYNOR, OSAMU KANEMURA, PERNILLA STÖDBERG, PHILIPPE GRANDRIEUX, RUTH HINKEL-PEVZNER, SATANICPORNOCULTSHOP, SEBASTIEN TELLIER, SIGRID SANDSTRÖM, SISSEL T, STEPHEN TORTON, SUSAN ROBB, THE SARTORIALIST AND YOLANDE ZAUBERMAN.

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LIVRAISON N°2
HIDDEN OBJECTS — EXCHANGE ISSUE

>>Do you remember the sound of a letter slipping through the letterbox? The weight and feel of the paper in your hands, your name handwritten in black ink, knowing from the handwriting whose name you will find signed at the bottom of the page?<<

Livraison II Exchange Issue — Letters are not the obvious inspiration in a world currently inundated with ways to keep in touch at all times (e-mail, mobile telephones, text messages, blackberries). Short correspondence is commonplace, but whatever happened to storytelling? Unnecessary reflections? Ramblings? Rants? This issue is about rediscovering the art of letterwriting.

How did the people we were intrigued by react to our letters? Heroes and heroines like Miranda July, Donna Tartt, Julie Verhoeven, Alexander Robotnick, Michael Nyman, Carl Johan de Geer, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Wes Lang, Alain de Botton and Serena Reeder exchanged a single letter each in reply to ours.

The visual side of Livraison #2 examines objects that pass most of us by daily without capturing our attention >>The stuff that surrounds you<<. We have placed these objects into a new context, allowing them to act as the model in front of the camera, showing the relationship between the photographer and object.

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ART CONTRIBUTORS:ANDERS EDSTRÖM, ANNA KLEBERG, ANNABEL ELSTON, ANNE DE VRIES, ANUSCHKA BLOMMERS, BELA BORSODI, CAMILLE VIVIER, DANNY TREACY, DAWID, ELSPETH DIEDERIX, ERWIN WURM, FREDERIK LIEBERATH, GARETH MCCONNELL, JOHAN FOWELIN, KRISTA VAN DER NIET, LARS TUNBJÖRK, MARIANNE VIERØ, MARNIX GOOSSENS, MAURICE SCHELTENS, Melanie Bonajo, MICHAEL BAUMGARTEN, NEIL STRAUSS, OLA BERGENGREN, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, RICHARD KERN, RIITTA PÄIVÄLÄINEN, TOBY MCFARLAN POND AND VIVIANE SASSEN.

WORD CONTRIBUTORS:ALAIN DE BOTTON, ALEXANDER ROBOTNICK, ALYSA NAHMIAS, AMY KELLNER, ANDREAS TILLIANDER, ANNA LUNDH, ARESA, BELLES OF THE BLACK DIAMONDFIELD, BENNETT MADISON, BILLY PARISH, CARL JOHAN DE GEER, DONNA TARTT, EMILY BARCLAY, FIELD, GENEVIÈVE GAUCKLER, HASSAN KHAN, JONAS HASSEN KHEMIRI, JORDAN SCHUSTER, JUAN MACLEAN, JULIE VERHOEVEN, KIM JONES, MALTE SCHLORF, MARK DOTY, MATTI PYYKKO, MICHAEL NYMAN, MIRANDA JULY, MISAKI KAWAI, NAOYUKI TSUJI, PAOLA STENBORG, SERENA REEDER, TETSUYA MIZUGUCHI, THE MAGIC NUMBERS, THE YES MEN, REIKO UNDERWATER, ROGER ANDERSSON, RUBEN FLEISCHER, WES LANG AND YASMINE KASSARI.

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LIVRAISON N°1
PRIVATE ISSUE

>>Private Issue constitutes an exploration of people by means of interviews and portraits. Your heroes and heroines, people you love or hate, interesting or not? You choose.<<

We display the two artforms of textual interviews and visual portraits separately. By omitting the image from the interviewed and the text from the portrayed, we dismiss the normal way of presenting people. All interviews are carried out via email through tailor-made questionnaires. The subjects’ answers are unedited in order to minimize judgement and maximize access to the person at hand.

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ART CONTRIBUTORS: Andreas Ackerup, Andreas Larsson, Elisabeth Toll, Fredrik Skogkvist, Jonas Isfält, Kristian Bengtsson, Louise Enhörning, Marcus Söder, Martina Hoogland Ivanow, Martin Runeborg, Melanie Bonajo, Miss Liz, Mikael Olsson, Ola Rindal, Sarah Shatz, Soody Sharifi, Sophie Mörner, Tobias Nilsson, Tomas Falmer and Vincent Gapaillard.

WORD CONTRIBUTORS: Adult, Alicia Erian, Ann-Sofie Back, Asia Argento, The Beauty Shop, BRUCE LABRUCE, Clay Lacefield, Efterklang, Extreme Kidnapping, Fluxus, Go Hiyama, Ikonoskop, James Warhola, Jason Lee, Jeans Team, Jonas Elding, Joseph Gaï Ramaka, Kalle Lasn, Kings of Convenience, Maison Martin Margiela, Matthew Thurber, May Cornet, M/M (Paris), Morenotwins, Petra Lindholm, Princess Nicotine, Rei Kawakubo, REJECTEFFECT, ROGER ANDERSSON, Stephen Elliot, Steve Almond, Swayzak, Syrup Helsinki and Yoav Shamir.

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OLA RINDAL — PARIS
(L—B. 009) POSTER

What tend to catch Ola Rindal’s eye in the »Paris« photo series is not the city’s most obvious optical attractions but the gaps in the urban fabric. His is a not a subjectively imagined Paris. It is a Paris that exists in the real world, albeit at the edge of our field of vision. Vaguely familiar but not immediately recognizable, the side of Paris that come into view here is its non-places.

We may encounter these blank or blind spots in any big city. Casually and fleetingly noticing their presence we seldom pay them very much attention. In »Paris« Rindal turns his camera at these spots to get a grasp of what goes on there. What he captures is the daily struggle for survival waged by the city’s poor and fallen — the human collateral chewed up and spat out by the big city machine.

»Paris« is not a socialrealist depiction of street life, however. Like Eugène Atget, the legendary late 19th century photographer of Paris, Rindal approaches his subject in a way that perhaps best is described as forensic. His gaze is naturally drawn to the things, buildings and people that suggest a different physiognomy of Paris than the one we have become accustomed to. Homing in on cracks and fissures in his surroundings his depiction hints at the presence of violent forces beneath the city’s civilized surface.

Many of the images in »Paris« evoke the sense of vulnerability that may overcome us when walking urban streets. This feeling of being exposed to an unpredictable outside is a recurring motif in Rindal’s overall work. It is present in the dark Parisian alleys of the »Night Light« series and in »Tokyo Flower«, which traced nature’s ability to survive on Tokyo’s concrete pavements. Here the outside is the broken, sometimes harsh urban reality that defines life for many people. At the same time these images contain what Walter Benjamin called »sparks of contingency« that grant them an urgent poetic quality.

Each image in the »Paris« series lends, in its own singular way, a language to that which is without means of expression. Whether we are witnessing a sleeping homeless man or a discarded building, their existence is calmly acknowledged as something that creates a crack in a city’s idealised image of itself. If there is a moral in these images it might be: the interspaces of our concrete jungle are populated by neglected people, and we look away because deep down we fear that one day we could be one of them.

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MARTINA HOOGLAND IVANOW
SATELLITE + CIRCULAR WAIT (L—B. 008) POSTER (B)

Martina Hoogland Ivanow’s images often evoke an acute feeling of something indefinite going on. In her photographic series Satellite (2009-2010) two women sit upright on sun chairs smeared in clay. Their faces are turned away from the camera towards a third person, whose legs we observe in the upper left corner of the image. But the final piece of the puzzle that might explain what we are witnessing is tantalisingly out of reach. We cannot even be sure that there is indeed such a thing as a missing explanatory element. Our optical mastery of the image’s narrative is short-circuited by the force field that Hoogland Ivanow’s framing and subtle play with light and shadow creates. We are left with a muted mystery felt on an emotional rather than logical level.

»I reduce until only a whisper remains,« Hoogland Ivanow says about her editing method. At first this sounds pretty straightforward. Hoogland Ivanow’s photography has always transcended the border between realism and fiction; and being reducible to neither one nor the other, it is not hard to imagine that her image making must require meticulous editing to tease out an essence. Her use of an acoustic metaphor is therefore apt since it implies the necessity of removing noise until only a core of visual truth remains.

That is all very well. But it does not do full justice to what it is like to experience her images firsthand. The catch in the quote is that little word »whisper«. Saturated with more meaning than it may at first suggest, »whisper« provides an insight into the mystery of Hoogland Ivanow’s art.

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MARTINA HOOGLAND IVANOW
SATELLITE + CIRCULAR WAIT (L—B. 008) POSTER (A)

Martina Hoogland Ivanow’s images often evoke an acute feeling of something indefinite going on. In her photographic series Satellite (2009-2010) two women sit upright on sun chairs smeared in clay. Their faces are turned away from the camera towards a third person, whose legs we observe in the upper left corner of the image. But the final piece of the puzzle that might explain what we are witnessing is tantalisingly out of reach. We cannot even be sure that there is indeed such a thing as a missing explanatory element. Our optical mastery of the image’s narrative is short-circuited by the force field that Hoogland Ivanow’s framing and subtle play with light and shadow creates. We are left with a muted mystery felt on an emotional rather than logical level.

»I reduce until only a whisper remains,« Hoogland Ivanow says about her editing method. At first this sounds pretty straightforward. Hoogland Ivanow’s photography has always transcended the border between realism and fiction; and being reducible to neither one nor the other, it is not hard to imagine that her image making must require meticulous editing to tease out an essence. Her use of an acoustic metaphor is therefore apt since it implies the necessity of removing noise until only a core of visual truth remains.

That is all very well. But it does not do full justice to what it is like to experience her images firsthand. The catch in the quote is that little word »whisper«. Saturated with more meaning than it may at first suggest, »whisper« provides an insight into the mystery of Hoogland Ivanow’s art.

The whisper is akin to breathing. It can be seductive but also eerie. Think, for instance, of the uncanny whispers that reverberate throughout the soundtrack of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror masterpiece Suspiria. To perceive a whisper in a photographic image is of course acoustically impossible. But taken as a metaphor for the fragile it is possible to see Hoogland Ivanow’s aesthetic practice as one of making room for the barely perceptible. This presupposes a kind of emphatic, listening attitude. A finely attuned ear. What Hoogland Ivanow tunes up in her images is in a way what Roland Barthes once called the punctum of a photo: that singular aspect of an image that touches the viewer without becoming reduced to a message or a thing.

A case in point is the photo depicting three hunters walking across a mown lawn in Hoogland Ivanow’s photographic series Circular Wait. Appearing against the evening light as silhouettes with long, sharp shadows, the trio’s internal atmosphere is intriguing. The posture of the man to the left is relaxed to the point of lazy, while the man in the middle walks with a focused, almost arrogant resolve. The stance of the man to the right is more ambiguous. His step appears a bit hesitant. Is he captured in a moment of doubt? Or rather of contemplation? We cannot say for sure.

What Hoogland Ivanow skilfully brings out here is the vagueness of the relationship between the three men. She makes the space between them tangible. The unclear social dynamics that characterise this image can be seen as the image’s punctum. Like a memory of something whispered in a dream, it is this quality of Hoogland Ivanow’s art that lingers in our mind long after we think we have decoded her images.

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ROBERT NETTARP — 1970 – 2002
(L—B. 005) POSTER (J)

From a fashion perspective, the nineties meant a shift on many levels. Fashion photographers, as well as other practitioners, started to engage with fashion in a critical and self-reflexive way, turning, as Sophie von Olfers suggests in ”Not in Fashion” from 2010, ”the magazine into an active platform for cultural dialogue.” Instead of reproducing stereotypical fashion imagery as expected by the fashion system (or logic of the fashion industry), they became authors in their own right, blurring the lines between fashion, art and other creative disciplines. Like artists, fashion photographers began embracing their own subjectivity and acting out of personal concerns, addressing issues that traditionally had not been part of their professional repertoire.

Even though the increased diversity of individual voices within the field makes generalization difficult, fashion photography in the nineties nevertheless displays some common features. As a reaction to the cult of extravagant glamour and the exclusive object during the previous decade, many photographers were moving towards reality (which, of course, in fashion usually is a staged reality), creating pictures in a documentary style to deconstruct and negotiate the borders between fashion and everyday life. Another significant feature was the adoption of digital technology. By applying software as a tool for visual expression, photographers effectively transformed the dynamics of image making, destabilizing the relation between physical reality (as viewed through the camera) and appearance.
Irrespective of visual strategy, much of the imagery evoked a sense of darkness, which has been explored in depth by caroline evans in ”Fashion at the Edge” from 2003. By freeing themselves from demands to be prescriptive, fashion photographers could suddenly deal with the whole spectrum of human experience, positive as well as negative aspects. More often than not, the imagery was ambiguous. Evans talks of themes within fashion ”at the borders of beauty and horror, where sex and death intersected with commerce.” Avoiding idealizing, fashion photographers and their collaborators used their voices to articulate anxieties against a backdrop of rapid changes in society during this time. But they also constructed new meaning and imagery, using their creativity as a positive force to outline radical visions of new, alternative realities, without leaving the fashion context.

Robert Nettarp’s work reflects the transition towards a more subjective and equivocal fashion photography in the nineties. At his sudden death at age 32, the swedish fashion photographer was celebrated as a truly creative influence in the industry. Using digital means to distort, twist and subvert reality, Nettarp challenged ideas about perfection, as in ”Åse Beautiful Pain”, probably his most renowned picture, where the model’s face is covered by fake bruises. He also raised questions about sexuality, violence and gender with imagery fuelled by a disturbing, dark energy, or a camp, wicked attitude: heads wrapped in transparent plastic or close-fitting balaclavas, a model sticking her tongue out to the camera, naked or semi-naked bodies in surreal settings, often processed in the computer studio.

Above all, Nettarp didn’t want the surface to take over. Things had to be broken down, perverted, to reveal deeper layers, an emotional state. Or in his own words: ”whipped up”, digitally reconfigured. Perhaps this is also his biggest legacy, the art of retouching as a way to visualize on the outside what takes place on the inside. If the mood is dark, that’s because he exposed the imperfections, what’s usually hidden, denied or repressed. By using fashion as a space for personal intervention and digital tools as means of communication, he made the invisible visible – a discomforting scratch on the perfect exterior.

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ROBERT NETTARP — 1970 – 2002
(L—B. 005) POSTER (I)

From a fashion perspective, the nineties meant a shift on many levels. Fashion photographers, as well as other practitioners, started to engage with fashion in a critical and self-reflexive way, turning, as Sophie von Olfers suggests in ”Not in Fashion” from 2010, ”the magazine into an active platform for cultural dialogue.” Instead of reproducing stereotypical fashion imagery as expected by the fashion system (or logic of the fashion industry), they became authors in their own right, blurring the lines between fashion, art and other creative disciplines. Like artists, fashion photographers began embracing their own subjectivity and acting out of personal concerns, addressing issues that traditionally had not been part of their professional repertoire.

Even though the increased diversity of individual voices within the field makes generalization difficult, fashion photography in the nineties nevertheless displays some common features. As a reaction to the cult of extravagant glamour and the exclusive object during the previous decade, many photographers were moving towards reality (which, of course, in fashion usually is a staged reality), creating pictures in a documentary style to deconstruct and negotiate the borders between fashion and everyday life. Another significant feature was the adoption of digital technology. By applying software as a tool for visual expression, photographers effectively transformed the dynamics of image making, destabilizing the relation between physical reality (as viewed through the camera) and appearance.
Irrespective of visual strategy, much of the imagery evoked a sense of darkness, which has been explored in depth by caroline evans in ”Fashion at the Edge” from 2003. By freeing themselves from demands to be prescriptive, fashion photographers could suddenly deal with the whole spectrum of human experience, positive as well as negative aspects. More often than not, the imagery was ambiguous. Evans talks of themes within fashion ”at the borders of beauty and horror, where sex and death intersected with commerce.” Avoiding idealizing, fashion photographers and their collaborators used their voices to articulate anxieties against a backdrop of rapid changes in society during this time. But they also constructed new meaning and imagery, using their creativity as a positive force to outline radical visions of new, alternative realities, without leaving the fashion context.

Robert Nettarp’s work reflects the transition towards a more subjective and equivocal fashion photography in the nineties. At his sudden death at age 32, the swedish fashion photographer was celebrated as a truly creative influence in the industry. Using digital means to distort, twist and subvert reality, Nettarp challenged ideas about perfection, as in ”Åse Beautiful Pain”, probably his most renowned picture, where the model’s face is covered by fake bruises. He also raised questions about sexuality, violence and gender with imagery fuelled by a disturbing, dark energy, or a camp, wicked attitude: heads wrapped in transparent plastic or close-fitting balaclavas, a model sticking her tongue out to the camera, naked or semi-naked bodies in surreal settings, often processed in the computer studio.

Above all, Nettarp didn’t want the surface to take over. Things had to be broken down, perverted, to reveal deeper layers, an emotional state. Or in his own words: ”whipped up”, digitally reconfigured. Perhaps this is also his biggest legacy, the art of retouching as a way to visualize on the outside what takes place on the inside. If the mood is dark, that’s because he exposed the imperfections, what’s usually hidden, denied or repressed. By using fashion as a space for personal intervention and digital tools as means of communication, he made the invisible visible – a discomforting scratch on the perfect exterior.

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ROBERT NETTARP — 1970 – 2002
(L—B. 005) POSTER (H)

From a fashion perspective, the nineties meant a shift on many levels. Fashion photographers, as well as other practitioners, started to engage with fashion in a critical and self-reflexive way, turning, as Sophie von Olfers suggests in ”Not in Fashion” from 2010, ”the magazine into an active platform for cultural dialogue.” Instead of reproducing stereotypical fashion imagery as expected by the fashion system (or logic of the fashion industry), they became authors in their own right, blurring the lines between fashion, art and other creative disciplines. Like artists, fashion photographers began embracing their own subjectivity and acting out of personal concerns, addressing issues that traditionally had not been part of their professional repertoire.

Even though the increased diversity of individual voices within the field makes generalization difficult, fashion photography in the nineties nevertheless displays some common features. As a reaction to the cult of extravagant glamour and the exclusive object during the previous decade, many photographers were moving towards reality (which, of course, in fashion usually is a staged reality), creating pictures in a documentary style to deconstruct and negotiate the borders between fashion and everyday life. Another significant feature was the adoption of digital technology. By applying software as a tool for visual expression, photographers effectively transformed the dynamics of image making, destabilizing the relation between physical reality (as viewed through the camera) and appearance.
Irrespective of visual strategy, much of the imagery evoked a sense of darkness, which has been explored in depth by caroline evans in ”Fashion at the Edge” from 2003. By freeing themselves from demands to be prescriptive, fashion photographers could suddenly deal with the whole spectrum of human experience, positive as well as negative aspects. More often than not, the imagery was ambiguous. Evans talks of themes within fashion ”at the borders of beauty and horror, where sex and death intersected with commerce.” Avoiding idealizing, fashion photographers and their collaborators used their voices to articulate anxieties against a backdrop of rapid changes in society during this time. But they also constructed new meaning and imagery, using their creativity as a positive force to outline radical visions of new, alternative realities, without leaving the fashion context.

Robert Nettarp’s work reflects the transition towards a more subjective and equivocal fashion photography in the nineties. At his sudden death at age 32, the swedish fashion photographer was celebrated as a truly creative influence in the industry. Using digital means to distort, twist and subvert reality, Nettarp challenged ideas about perfection, as in ”Åse Beautiful Pain”, probably his most renowned picture, where the model’s face is covered by fake bruises. He also raised questions about sexuality, violence and gender with imagery fuelled by a disturbing, dark energy, or a camp, wicked attitude: heads wrapped in transparent plastic or close-fitting balaclavas, a model sticking her tongue out to the camera, naked or semi-naked bodies in surreal settings, often processed in the computer studio.

Above all, Nettarp didn’t want the surface to take over. Things had to be broken down, perverted, to reveal deeper layers, an emotional state. Or in his own words: ”whipped up”, digitally reconfigured. Perhaps this is also his biggest legacy, the art of retouching as a way to visualize on the outside what takes place on the inside. If the mood is dark, that’s because he exposed the imperfections, what’s usually hidden, denied or repressed. By using fashion as a space for personal intervention and digital tools as means of communication, he made the invisible visible – a discomforting scratch on the perfect exterior.

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ROBERT NETTARP — 1970 – 2002
(L—B. 005) POSTER (G)

From a fashion perspective, the nineties meant a shift on many levels. Fashion photographers, as well as other practitioners, started to engage with fashion in a critical and self-reflexive way, turning, as Sophie von Olfers suggests in ”Not in Fashion” from 2010, ”the magazine into an active platform for cultural dialogue.” Instead of reproducing stereotypical fashion imagery as expected by the fashion system (or logic of the fashion industry), they became authors in their own right, blurring the lines between fashion, art and other creative disciplines. Like artists, fashion photographers began embracing their own subjectivity and acting out of personal concerns, addressing issues that traditionally had not been part of their professional repertoire.

Even though the increased diversity of individual voices within the field makes generalization difficult, fashion photography in the nineties nevertheless displays some common features. As a reaction to the cult of extravagant glamour and the exclusive object during the previous decade, many photographers were moving towards reality (which, of course, in fashion usually is a staged reality), creating pictures in a documentary style to deconstruct and negotiate the borders between fashion and everyday life. Another significant feature was the adoption of digital technology. By applying software as a tool for visual expression, photographers effectively transformed the dynamics of image making, destabilizing the relation between physical reality (as viewed through the camera) and appearance.
Irrespective of visual strategy, much of the imagery evoked a sense of darkness, which has been explored in depth by caroline evans in ”Fashion at the Edge” from 2003. By freeing themselves from demands to be prescriptive, fashion photographers could suddenly deal with the whole spectrum of human experience, positive as well as negative aspects. More often than not, the imagery was ambiguous. Evans talks of themes within fashion ”at the borders of beauty and horror, where sex and death intersected with commerce.” Avoiding idealizing, fashion photographers and their collaborators used their voices to articulate anxieties against a backdrop of rapid changes in society during this time. But they also constructed new meaning and imagery, using their creativity as a positive force to outline radical visions of new, alternative realities, without leaving the fashion context.

Robert Nettarp’s work reflects the transition towards a more subjective and equivocal fashion photography in the nineties. At his sudden death at age 32, the swedish fashion photographer was celebrated as a truly creative influence in the industry. Using digital means to distort, twist and subvert reality, Nettarp challenged ideas about perfection, as in ”Åse Beautiful Pain”, probably his most renowned picture, where the model’s face is covered by fake bruises. He also raised questions about sexuality, violence and gender with imagery fuelled by a disturbing, dark energy, or a camp, wicked attitude: heads wrapped in transparent plastic or close-fitting balaclavas, a model sticking her tongue out to the camera, naked or semi-naked bodies in surreal settings, often processed in the computer studio.

Above all, Nettarp didn’t want the surface to take over. Things had to be broken down, perverted, to reveal deeper layers, an emotional state. Or in his own words: ”whipped up”, digitally reconfigured. Perhaps this is also his biggest legacy, the art of retouching as a way to visualize on the outside what takes place on the inside. If the mood is dark, that’s because he exposed the imperfections, what’s usually hidden, denied or repressed. By using fashion as a space for personal intervention and digital tools as means of communication, he made the invisible visible – a discomforting scratch on the perfect exterior.

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ROBERT NETTARP — 1970 – 2002
(L—B. 005) POSTER (F)

From a fashion perspective, the nineties meant a shift on many levels. Fashion photographers, as well as other practitioners, started to engage with fashion in a critical and self-reflexive way, turning, as Sophie von Olfers suggests in ”Not in Fashion” from 2010, ”the magazine into an active platform for cultural dialogue.” Instead of reproducing stereotypical fashion imagery as expected by the fashion system (or logic of the fashion industry), they became authors in their own right, blurring the lines between fashion, art and other creative disciplines. Like artists, fashion photographers began embracing their own subjectivity and acting out of personal concerns, addressing issues that traditionally had not been part of their professional repertoire.

Even though the increased diversity of individual voices within the field makes generalization difficult, fashion photography in the nineties nevertheless displays some common features. As a reaction to the cult of extravagant glamour and the exclusive object during the previous decade, many photographers were moving towards reality (which, of course, in fashion usually is a staged reality), creating pictures in a documentary style to deconstruct and negotiate the borders between fashion and everyday life. Another significant feature was the adoption of digital technology. By applying software as a tool for visual expression, photographers effectively transformed the dynamics of image making, destabilizing the relation between physical reality (as viewed through the camera) and appearance.
Irrespective of visual strategy, much of the imagery evoked a sense of darkness, which has been explored in depth by caroline evans in ”Fashion at the Edge” from 2003. By freeing themselves from demands to be prescriptive, fashion photographers could suddenly deal with the whole spectrum of human experience, positive as well as negative aspects. More often than not, the imagery was ambiguous. Evans talks of themes within fashion ”at the borders of beauty and horror, where sex and death intersected with commerce.” Avoiding idealizing, fashion photographers and their collaborators used their voices to articulate anxieties against a backdrop of rapid changes in society during this time. But they also constructed new meaning and imagery, using their creativity as a positive force to outline radical visions of new, alternative realities, without leaving the fashion context.

Robert Nettarp’s work reflects the transition towards a more subjective and equivocal fashion photography in the nineties. At his sudden death at age 32, the swedish fashion photographer was celebrated as a truly creative influence in the industry. Using digital means to distort, twist and subvert reality, Nettarp challenged ideas about perfection, as in ”Åse Beautiful Pain”, probably his most renowned picture, where the model’s face is covered by fake bruises. He also raised questions about sexuality, violence and gender with imagery fuelled by a disturbing, dark energy, or a camp, wicked attitude: heads wrapped in transparent plastic or close-fitting balaclavas, a model sticking her tongue out to the camera, naked or semi-naked bodies in surreal settings, often processed in the computer studio.

Above all, Nettarp didn’t want the surface to take over. Things had to be broken down, perverted, to reveal deeper layers, an emotional state. Or in his own words: ”whipped up”, digitally reconfigured. Perhaps this is also his biggest legacy, the art of retouching as a way to visualize on the outside what takes place on the inside. If the mood is dark, that’s because he exposed the imperfections, what’s usually hidden, denied or repressed. By using fashion as a space for personal intervention and digital tools as means of communication, he made the invisible visible – a discomforting scratch on the perfect exterior.

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ROBERT NETTARP — 1970 – 2002
(L—B. 005) POSTER (E)

From a fashion perspective, the nineties meant a shift on many levels. Fashion photographers, as well as other practitioners, started to engage with fashion in a critical and self-reflexive way, turning, as Sophie von Olfers suggests in ”Not in Fashion” from 2010, ”the magazine into an active platform for cultural dialogue.” Instead of reproducing stereotypical fashion imagery as expected by the fashion system (or logic of the fashion industry), they became authors in their own right, blurring the lines between fashion, art and other creative disciplines. Like artists, fashion photographers began embracing their own subjectivity and acting out of personal concerns, addressing issues that traditionally had not been part of their professional repertoire.

Even though the increased diversity of individual voices within the field makes generalization difficult, fashion photography in the nineties nevertheless displays some common features. As a reaction to the cult of extravagant glamour and the exclusive object during the previous decade, many photographers were moving towards reality (which, of course, in fashion usually is a staged reality), creating pictures in a documentary style to deconstruct and negotiate the borders between fashion and everyday life. Another significant feature was the adoption of digital technology. By applying software as a tool for visual expression, photographers effectively transformed the dynamics of image making, destabilizing the relation between physical reality (as viewed through the camera) and appearance.
Irrespective of visual strategy, much of the imagery evoked a sense of darkness, which has been explored in depth by caroline evans in ”Fashion at the Edge” from 2003. By freeing themselves from demands to be prescriptive, fashion photographers could suddenly deal with the whole spectrum of human experience, positive as well as negative aspects. More often than not, the imagery was ambiguous. Evans talks of themes within fashion ”at the borders of beauty and horror, where sex and death intersected with commerce.” Avoiding idealizing, fashion photographers and their collaborators used their voices to articulate anxieties against a backdrop of rapid changes in society during this time. But they also constructed new meaning and imagery, using their creativity as a positive force to outline radical visions of new, alternative realities, without leaving the fashion context.

Robert Nettarp’s work reflects the transition towards a more subjective and equivocal fashion photography in the nineties. At his sudden death at age 32, the swedish fashion photographer was celebrated as a truly creative influence in the industry. Using digital means to distort, twist and subvert reality, Nettarp challenged ideas about perfection, as in ”Åse Beautiful Pain”, probably his most renowned picture, where the model’s face is covered by fake bruises. He also raised questions about sexuality, violence and gender with imagery fuelled by a disturbing, dark energy, or a camp, wicked attitude: heads wrapped in transparent plastic or close-fitting balaclavas, a model sticking her tongue out to the camera, naked or semi-naked bodies in surreal settings, often processed in the computer studio.

Above all, Nettarp didn’t want the surface to take over. Things had to be broken down, perverted, to reveal deeper layers, an emotional state. Or in his own words: ”whipped up”, digitally reconfigured. Perhaps this is also his biggest legacy, the art of retouching as a way to visualize on the outside what takes place on the inside. If the mood is dark, that’s because he exposed the imperfections, what’s usually hidden, denied or repressed. By using fashion as a space for personal intervention and digital tools as means of communication, he made the invisible visible – a discomforting scratch on the perfect exterior.

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ROBERT NETTARP — 1970 – 2002
(L—B. 005) POSTER (D)

From a fashion perspective, the nineties meant a shift on many levels. Fashion photographers, as well as other practitioners, started to engage with fashion in a critical and self-reflexive way, turning, as Sophie von Olfers suggests in ”Not in Fashion” from 2010, ”the magazine into an active platform for cultural dialogue.” Instead of reproducing stereotypical fashion imagery as expected by the fashion system (or logic of the fashion industry), they became authors in their own right, blurring the lines between fashion, art and other creative disciplines. Like artists, fashion photographers began embracing their own subjectivity and acting out of personal concerns, addressing issues that traditionally had not been part of their professional repertoire.

Even though the increased diversity of individual voices within the field makes generalization difficult, fashion photography in the nineties nevertheless displays some common features. As a reaction to the cult of extravagant glamour and the exclusive object during the previous decade, many photographers were moving towards reality (which, of course, in fashion usually is a staged reality), creating pictures in a documentary style to deconstruct and negotiate the borders between fashion and everyday life. Another significant feature was the adoption of digital technology. By applying software as a tool for visual expression, photographers effectively transformed the dynamics of image making, destabilizing the relation between physical reality (as viewed through the camera) and appearance.
Irrespective of visual strategy, much of the imagery evoked a sense of darkness, which has been explored in depth by caroline evans in ”Fashion at the Edge” from 2003. By freeing themselves from demands to be prescriptive, fashion photographers could suddenly deal with the whole spectrum of human experience, positive as well as negative aspects. More often than not, the imagery was ambiguous. Evans talks of themes within fashion ”at the borders of beauty and horror, where sex and death intersected with commerce.” Avoiding idealizing, fashion photographers and their collaborators used their voices to articulate anxieties against a backdrop of rapid changes in society during this time. But they also constructed new meaning and imagery, using their creativity as a positive force to outline radical visions of new, alternative realities, without leaving the fashion context.

Robert Nettarp’s work reflects the transition towards a more subjective and equivocal fashion photography in the nineties. At his sudden death at age 32, the swedish fashion photographer was celebrated as a truly creative influence in the industry. Using digital means to distort, twist and subvert reality, Nettarp challenged ideas about perfection, as in ”Åse Beautiful Pain”, probably his most renowned picture, where the model’s face is covered by fake bruises. He also raised questions about sexuality, violence and gender with imagery fuelled by a disturbing, dark energy, or a camp, wicked attitude: heads wrapped in transparent plastic or close-fitting balaclavas, a model sticking her tongue out to the camera, naked or semi-naked bodies in surreal settings, often processed in the computer studio.

Above all, Nettarp didn’t want the surface to take over. Things had to be broken down, perverted, to reveal deeper layers, an emotional state. Or in his own words: ”whipped up”, digitally reconfigured. Perhaps this is also his biggest legacy, the art of retouching as a way to visualize on the outside what takes place on the inside. If the mood is dark, that’s because he exposed the imperfections, what’s usually hidden, denied or repressed. By using fashion as a space for personal intervention and digital tools as means of communication, he made the invisible visible – a discomforting scratch on the perfect exterior.

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ROBERT NETTARP — 1970 – 2002
(L—B. 005) POSTER (C)

From a fashion perspective, the nineties meant a shift on many levels. Fashion photographers, as well as other practitioners, started to engage with fashion in a critical and self-reflexive way, turning, as Sophie von Olfers suggests in ”Not in Fashion” from 2010, ”the magazine into an active platform for cultural dialogue.” Instead of reproducing stereotypical fashion imagery as expected by the fashion system (or logic of the fashion industry), they became authors in their own right, blurring the lines between fashion, art and other creative disciplines. Like artists, fashion photographers began embracing their own subjectivity and acting out of personal concerns, addressing issues that traditionally had not been part of their professional repertoire.

Even though the increased diversity of individual voices within the field makes generalization difficult, fashion photography in the nineties nevertheless displays some common features. As a reaction to the cult of extravagant glamour and the exclusive object during the previous decade, many photographers were moving towards reality (which, of course, in fashion usually is a staged reality), creating pictures in a documentary style to deconstruct and negotiate the borders between fashion and everyday life. Another significant feature was the adoption of digital technology. By applying software as a tool for visual expression, photographers effectively transformed the dynamics of image making, destabilizing the relation between physical reality (as viewed through the camera) and appearance.
Irrespective of visual strategy, much of the imagery evoked a sense of darkness, which has been explored in depth by caroline evans in ”Fashion at the Edge” from 2003. By freeing themselves from demands to be prescriptive, fashion photographers could suddenly deal with the whole spectrum of human experience, positive as well as negative aspects. More often than not, the imagery was ambiguous. Evans talks of themes within fashion ”at the borders of beauty and horror, where sex and death intersected with commerce.” Avoiding idealizing, fashion photographers and their collaborators used their voices to articulate anxieties against a backdrop of rapid changes in society during this time. But they also constructed new meaning and imagery, using their creativity as a positive force to outline radical visions of new, alternative realities, without leaving the fashion context.

Robert Nettarp’s work reflects the transition towards a more subjective and equivocal fashion photography in the nineties. At his sudden death at age 32, the swedish fashion photographer was celebrated as a truly creative influence in the industry. Using digital means to distort, twist and subvert reality, Nettarp challenged ideas about perfection, as in ”Åse Beautiful Pain”, probably his most renowned picture, where the model’s face is covered by fake bruises. He also raised questions about sexuality, violence and gender with imagery fuelled by a disturbing, dark energy, or a camp, wicked attitude: heads wrapped in transparent plastic or close-fitting balaclavas, a model sticking her tongue out to the camera, naked or semi-naked bodies in surreal settings, often processed in the computer studio.

Above all, Nettarp didn’t want the surface to take over. Things had to be broken down, perverted, to reveal deeper layers, an emotional state. Or in his own words: ”whipped up”, digitally reconfigured. Perhaps this is also his biggest legacy, the art of retouching as a way to visualize on the outside what takes place on the inside. If the mood is dark, that’s because he exposed the imperfections, what’s usually hidden, denied or repressed. By using fashion as a space for personal intervention and digital tools as means of communication, he made the invisible visible – a discomforting scratch on the perfect exterior.

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ROBERT NETTARP — 1970 – 2002
(L—B. 005) POSTER (B)

From a fashion perspective, the nineties meant a shift on many levels. Fashion photographers, as well as other practitioners, started to engage with fashion in a critical and self-reflexive way, turning, as Sophie von Olfers suggests in ”Not in Fashion” from 2010, ”the magazine into an active platform for cultural dialogue.” Instead of reproducing stereotypical fashion imagery as expected by the fashion system (or logic of the fashion industry), they became authors in their own right, blurring the lines between fashion, art and other creative disciplines. Like artists, fashion photographers began embracing their own subjectivity and acting out of personal concerns, addressing issues that traditionally had not been part of their professional repertoire.

Even though the increased diversity of individual voices within the field makes generalization difficult, fashion photography in the nineties nevertheless displays some common features. As a reaction to the cult of extravagant glamour and the exclusive object during the previous decade, many photographers were moving towards reality (which, of course, in fashion usually is a staged reality), creating pictures in a documentary style to deconstruct and negotiate the borders between fashion and everyday life. Another significant feature was the adoption of digital technology. By applying software as a tool for visual expression, photographers effectively transformed the dynamics of image making, destabilizing the relation between physical reality (as viewed through the camera) and appearance.
Irrespective of visual strategy, much of the imagery evoked a sense of darkness, which has been explored in depth by caroline evans in ”Fashion at the Edge” from 2003. By freeing themselves from demands to be prescriptive, fashion photographers could suddenly deal with the whole spectrum of human experience, positive as well as negative aspects. More often than not, the imagery was ambiguous. Evans talks of themes within fashion ”at the borders of beauty and horror, where sex and death intersected with commerce.” Avoiding idealizing, fashion photographers and their collaborators used their voices to articulate anxieties against a backdrop of rapid changes in society during this time. But they also constructed new meaning and imagery, using their creativity as a positive force to outline radical visions of new, alternative realities, without leaving the fashion context.

Robert Nettarp’s work reflects the transition towards a more subjective and equivocal fashion photography in the nineties. At his sudden death at age 32, the swedish fashion photographer was celebrated as a truly creative influence in the industry. Using digital means to distort, twist and subvert reality, Nettarp challenged ideas about perfection, as in ”Åse Beautiful Pain”, probably his most renowned picture, where the model’s face is covered by fake bruises. He also raised questions about sexuality, violence and gender with imagery fuelled by a disturbing, dark energy, or a camp, wicked attitude: heads wrapped in transparent plastic or close-fitting balaclavas, a model sticking her tongue out to the camera, naked or semi-naked bodies in surreal settings, often processed in the computer studio.

Above all, Nettarp didn’t want the surface to take over. Things had to be broken down, perverted, to reveal deeper layers, an emotional state. Or in his own words: ”whipped up”, digitally reconfigured. Perhaps this is also his biggest legacy, the art of retouching as a way to visualize on the outside what takes place on the inside. If the mood is dark, that’s because he exposed the imperfections, what’s usually hidden, denied or repressed. By using fashion as a space for personal intervention and digital tools as means of communication, he made the invisible visible – a discomforting scratch on the perfect exterior.

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ROBERT NETTARP — 1970 – 2002
(L—B. 005) POSTER (A)

From a fashion perspective, the nineties meant a shift on many levels. Fashion photographers, as well as other practitioners, started to engage with fashion in a critical and self-reflexive way, turning, as Sophie von Olfers suggests in ”Not in Fashion” from 2010, ”the magazine into an active platform for cultural dialogue.” Instead of reproducing stereotypical fashion imagery as expected by the fashion system (or logic of the fashion industry), they became authors in their own right, blurring the lines between fashion, art and other creative disciplines. Like artists, fashion photographers began embracing their own subjectivity and acting out of personal concerns, addressing issues that traditionally had not been part of their professional repertoire.

Even though the increased diversity of individual voices within the field makes generalization difficult, fashion photography in the nineties nevertheless displays some common features. As a reaction to the cult of extravagant glamour and the exclusive object during the previous decade, many photographers were moving towards reality (which, of course, in fashion usually is a staged reality), creating pictures in a documentary style to deconstruct and negotiate the borders between fashion and everyday life. Another significant feature was the adoption of digital technology. By applying software as a tool for visual expression, photographers effectively transformed the dynamics of image making, destabilizing the relation between physical reality (as viewed through the camera) and appearance.
Irrespective of visual strategy, much of the imagery evoked a sense of darkness, which has been explored in depth by caroline evans in ”Fashion at the Edge” from 2003. By freeing themselves from demands to be prescriptive, fashion photographers could suddenly deal with the whole spectrum of human experience, positive as well as negative aspects. More often than not, the imagery was ambiguous. Evans talks of themes within fashion ”at the borders of beauty and horror, where sex and death intersected with commerce.” Avoiding idealizing, fashion photographers and their collaborators used their voices to articulate anxieties against a backdrop of rapid changes in society during this time. But they also constructed new meaning and imagery, using their creativity as a positive force to outline radical visions of new, alternative realities, without leaving the fashion context.

Robert Nettarp’s work reflects the transition towards a more subjective and equivocal fashion photography in the nineties. At his sudden death at age 32, the swedish fashion photographer was celebrated as a truly creative influence in the industry. Using digital means to distort, twist and subvert reality, Nettarp challenged ideas about perfection, as in ”Åse Beautiful Pain”, probably his most renowned picture, where the model’s face is covered by fake bruises. He also raised questions about sexuality, violence and gender with imagery fuelled by a disturbing, dark energy, or a camp, wicked attitude: heads wrapped in transparent plastic or close-fitting balaclavas, a model sticking her tongue out to the camera, naked or semi-naked bodies in surreal settings, often processed in the computer studio.

Above all, Nettarp didn’t want the surface to take over. Things had to be broken down, perverted, to reveal deeper layers, an emotional state. Or in his own words: ”whipped up”, digitally reconfigured. Perhaps this is also his biggest legacy, the art of retouching as a way to visualize on the outside what takes place on the inside. If the mood is dark, that’s because he exposed the imperfections, what’s usually hidden, denied or repressed. By using fashion as a space for personal intervention and digital tools as means of communication, he made the invisible visible – a discomforting scratch on the perfect exterior.

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MARTINA HOOGLAND IVANOW — SPEEDWAY
(L—B. 004) POSTER

In the frozen dead of night a group of speedway riders circles a dirt track. Gathered under the racetrack lights in an almost ceremonial fashion, they seem like a secret society engaged in an enigmatic ritual. Yet, any clear answer about what we are actually witnessing keeps slipping away, like rain on a windshield.

This is the darkly opaque universe that Martina Hoogland Ivanow’s »Speedway« beckons us to enter. A world of minimal molecular motion. A landscape of ice, snow, dirt and night. One in which shadowy speedway bikers – almost as an afterthought – seemingly race to outduel the overwhelming forces of nature rather than compete with each other. Perhaps just to keep themselves warm. But nature is indifferent and unforgiving. It keeps on winning, forever on the verge of turning everything into an arrested state of ice and darkness.

Moving from one image to the next we hope to get closer to the real action. But the deeper we immerse ourselves into this universe the slacker the ties to the real world become, allowing the fictional dimension of photography to take hold. The unfamiliar overlaps the familiar. Without realizing it we find ourselves in a twilight zone where reality meets the dream and the drivers turn into leather-clad, one-gear, no-brake ghost riders.

The primal scene of Hoogland Ivanow’s images is a fitting metaphor for the estranging effect that »Speedway« has on the viewer. The race track is after all a loop where the start and finish are arbitrary points. Working along the lines of this logic, Hoogland Ivanow’s images tell a circular story without a determinable beginning or end. The viewer ultimately decides exactly where this story starts and finishes, with every such decision being radically subjective and provisional.

Thus, if there were an ideal way to navigate through the Möbius-like trajectory of »Speedway«, it would probably be a kind of sideways approach. Viewing the images can start anywhere and follow its own particular rhythm, decreasing and increasing the speed of viewing, not unlike the speedway racers themselves broadsiding into the bends of a race track. The story ends when you turn your gaze away from the images. Glancing at them again you soon realise that a new story has already begun to unfold.

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OLA RINDAL — NIGHT, LIGHT
(L—B. 003) POSTER