ANN-CHRISTIN BERTRAND

Opening Speech at Gallery Swedish Photography, Berlin, 2013

In the most recent work of Inka Lindergard & Niclas Holmström, the presentation of nature and landscapes and our perception of it are again the main theme around which the two artists systematically develop their artistic practice.

While the previous series, Humans Watching Humans, was still focused primarily on the observation of people observing nature, in the Saga series, nature itself became the central subject, along with the question how and by what means a beautiful landscape can to this very day cast such a powerful spell on people. By abstracting the colors of a sunset and then partially “applying” them on the depicted landscape with the aid of color filters that were held before the flash of the camera, the artists tried to accomplish a completely different kind of nature photography. This new photography put the emphasis on the playful investigation of individual components such as colors and light effects, with the aim of finding out what exactly could be responsible for the inexplicable feeling of enthrallment that we sense when observing certain natural events that are perceived as particularly beautiful – such as a sunset over the sea. Becoming Wilderness – as the meanwhile second exhibition of the two artists with Swedish Photography is entitled – continues this pursuit with the three series: Becoming Wilderness, The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth and The Pentagram Position.

Romanticism, Impressionism and travel photography

Landscape depictions are a popular subject in art history.  In the context of the work by Inka & Niclas, reference should be made primarily to landscape paintings originating from the Romanticism 1 and Impressionism periods. In particular, special attention should be paid to the Grainstacks series by Claude Monet: because when Claude Monet painted his Grainstacks  - designed and exhibited as a series – in 1890, he also focused on the analysis and presentation of light effects. Thus, he systematically examined the different moods associated with the different times of day by painting the same subject over and over again and thereby clearly demonstrating the connection between the change of light and the associated atmosphere. The main theme was not nature itself, in the form of an exceptionally beautiful landscape scene, but rather a specific natural phenomenon and its effect on the landscape as well as the atmospheric mood created by it. Monet painted this series at a time when the still very recent medium of photography was spreading inexorably as a means for the documentation of a That-is-how-it-was: People travelled, measured and photographically documented the world; “serial thinking” took hold in people’s minds and for the first time also became evident in other art genres. In terms of the history of photography, it was above all travel photography, especially prominent starting from the middle of the 19th century, that elevated the landscape theme to a preferred photographic subject. Unknown landscapes were documented to facilitate both their later examination and their remembrance. In the course of industrialization, the rail networks were extended and photographers brought pictures from the farthest reaches of the Earth. 3-D landscape shots, the so-called stereotypes, enjoyed huge popularity. Furthermore, the development of technical printing processes enabled the production of postcards, and starting from 1898, Kodak introduced a snapshot camera with roll film, the Kodak Brownie, which made it possible for the first time to carry lighter and smaller-sized materials on trips and to make do even without a dark chamber.  The medium democratized and became more popular. Nowadays many passenger aircraft carry as many cameras as passengers to the remotest corners all over the world. Every landscape, every special building and work of art have been documented photographically billions of times. From cell phone snapshots to professional photographs made with expensive equipment, travel photography has in the meanwhile become highly individualized, with landscape photographs inundating photo albums, print media and Internet forums.

The images in our minds

The immense image pools and their mass distribution through Social Media and the Internet have thus created a collective image memory, which seems to make it impossible to be unaffected by already existing images or to distance yourself from them. And this is exactly where Inka & Niclas come in with their work. Namely, they are not primarily concerned with ensuring the most accurate reproduction of a sunset or an evening dusk, as these are already available in thousands of instances, but rather choose to focus on the question of their very own perception of and approach to nature, and on the process of engaging with landscape images against the background of a subject that has been over-represented for a long time. Although there are barely any new photographic shots of landscapes to see any more: What is it that drives us to still reach for the camera to record certain lighting moods, sea views, meadows, fields and forests ourselves? What is it that stirs us emotionally, time and time again? And how can this sensation be documented photographically today, if at all possible? This slow and deliberate process of reconnecting with nature takes center stage in the work of the artists. Photoshop is only used for lighting and contrast correction; none of the photographs were falsified, regardless of how surreal or mystical they might come across. Instead, the two artists intervene actively in nature with the simplest methods to create performances or – only for the briefest moment of photographic recording – surreal seeming sculptures, which are then immediately removed and only remain visible in the photographic image. Thus, the difference to the Land Art movement is that the artists here only perform temporary interventions in nature which are directly intended for recording with the camera.

Photographic reality – physical reality

Temporary artistic activities and their photographic documentation have already been in a similar relationship in the past: In the course of the Concept Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the photography medium acquired a new meaning when it was used to photographically document and hence permanently preserve artistic performances or happenings. Thanks to the photographic documentation of these artistic events, which were only intended for a particular moment, these art forms became accessible to the art market; however, the focus always remained on the activity itself, which was considered to be the actual work of art. The photography was solely perceived as documentation. By contrast, Inka & Niclas go one step further here: although they still use photography in its traditional function for the documentation of an artistic activity, at the same time photography itself is very consciously understood as the final work of art. This becomes apparent not just from the well thought-out colors and composition of the images, but also from the type of framing used, since the frames in The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth are no longer understood as a limitation of photography, but rather as a part of it. Photography deliberately becomes the artistic end product, the actual artistic object. Consequently, when The Pentagram Position series additionally integrates the sculpture of a penguin, which appears simply white to the naked eye, but is presented as a glistening, silver-colored “bird of paradise” in the photographic image through the use of a camera flashlight, this reminds viewers not just of the surreal seeming figures, which the artists create specifically for their photographs from branches, leaves, stones and twigs. Rather, the artists make their artistic technique transparent and proceed to introduce a second level of reflection. This is confirmed in the Becoming Wilderness series, which also sees repeated use of reflective materials, whose glittering appearance only becomes visible to the human eye through the flashlight of the camera. While unperceivable to the eye in the physical world, photographic reality takes center stage here and illustrates in a playful, humorous way how very much photographic reality diverges from physical reality, and how different the two are. In addition to consciously depicting certain landscapes and natural phenomena while remaining aware of their representation both in art history and in today’s boundless image pool, the most recent work of the artist duo focuses on the playful, media-reflective analysis of our own perception mechanisms.

In this process, the two artists join a tendency in modern art photography, which makes them the representatives of a younger generation, whose work increasingly deals not only with the images in our minds, but also with the associated effects on our perception mechanisms 2. In what is essentially a playful, experimental approach, the fundamental characteristic properties of photography are used as the starting point for creating levels of reflection, which make it possible to elucidate our modern-day perception mechanisms or, in other words, our connection with reality, which is increasingly – at the latest since the digitalization of photography – constituted through images, or through a photographic reality, rather than through the actual physical reality.

 

1 Cf. also the opening speech of Heinz Stahlhut in the scope of the Humans Watching Humans exhibition at Swedish Photography, 2011

2 One example (of many) here would be the Swiss artist duo of Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, whose series, The Great Unreal (2009) put the emphasis on the difficulty of creating images of a trip through today’s America without falling back on the numerous already existing images in our minds, which are already highly familiar through the work of artists such as Robert Frank or Stephen Shore, but also through the influence of American cinema.