Contact

Inka & Niclas Lindergård

inkaandniclas@gmail.com
+4673 4402455
Studio: Ateljé Koltrasten, Liljeholmsvägen 8A, 117 61 Stockholm, Sweden
Instagram
Artist video

Dorothée Nilsson Gallery

Potsdamer Straße 65, Berlin, Germany
www.dorotheenilsson.com
dn@dorotheenilsson.com

Texts

English
Bio
Extensions book essay, Olga Krzeszowiec Malmsten
Tourist, Leo Busch
Extensions, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery
In Bloom, Fotografiska
Luminous Matter, Olga Krzeszowiec Malmsten
4k Ultra HD, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery
The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth, Therese Kellner
EMOP Arendt Award, Claire di Felice
Inka & Niclas, Riga Photomonth, Alnis Stakle
Family Portraits, Frank Woodbridge
Rituals and Rainbows, Dominica Paige
Becoming Wilderness, Therese Kellner
Of Great Wonder, Alexxa Gotthardt
Swedish
Essä från boken Extensions, Olga Krzeszowiec Malmsten
En övermättad värld, Katinka Goldberg, Magasinet Fotografi
Vatten, Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Ord & Bild
In Bloom, Fotografiska
The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth, Therese Kellner
I relation till – en utställning om rum och plats, Kristyna Müller
The Belt of Venus and The Shadow of the Earth , Stefan Nilsson

Selected Exhibitions

Current

Extensions, Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin, Germany.
Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocen, The Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, North Carolina, USA.
In Bloom, Fotografiska, Tallinn, Estonia.

Upcoming

Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocen, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, California, USA.
Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocen, Anchorage Museum, Alaska, USA.

2024

Tourist, Crowded, Salon am Moritzplatz, Berlin, Germany.
RIZZ/MAXX ’24, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Berlin, Germany.
Mitt priviata är politiskt, det är din skit också., Färgfabriken & Konstkompaniet. Private home of artist Petra Hultman, Liljeholmen, Stockholm, Sweden.
Human/Nature – Encountering Ourselves in the Natural World, Fotografiska, New York, USA.
Art Düsseldorf, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Germany.

2023

Extensions, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Berlin, Germany.
Rethinkning Landscape, Museo Fortuny and Bugno Art Gallery, Venice, Italy.
AMT Salon, The former district court of Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany.
Return to Nature Pearl Art Museum (PAM), Shanghai, China.
Ultimate, Phillips, Berkeley Square, London, UK.
Ultimate, Paris Highlights Preview, Phillips, Paris, France.
Must we travel to be happy? Salle Gilbert Gaillard, Clermont-Ferrand, France.
Chart in Tivoli, Tivoli, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Chart Art Fair, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Time In Jazz, Sardinia, Italy.
In Bloom, Fotografiska, Stockholm, Sweden.
Must we travel to be happy? Fondation groupe EDF, Paris, France.
Hidden Gems, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Berlin, Germany.

2022

Nature Future, Kampa park, the Institut Francais, Prague, Czech Republic.
Family Portraits (Solo Exhibition) Sternenpassage, Vienna, Austria.
AMT SALON, Berlin, Germany.
Konstkompaniet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Photo Basel, Switzerland.
Athens Photo Festival, Benaki Museum / Pireos 138, Greece.
Rethinking Nature/Rethinking Landscape, European Month of Photography Arendt Award 2021, Foto Wien, Atelier Augarte, Vienna, Austria.

2021

Destination. From the Seaside Resort to the Cosmos, Bienalsur 2021 – International Biennial of Contemporary Art of the South America MAR Museum, Mar del Plata, Argentina.
Family Portraits, OFF Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia.
Suniverse, Xintiandi, Shanghai, China.
Rethinking Nature/Rethinking Landscape, European Month of Photography Arendt Award 2021, IMAGO LISBOA, Lisbon, Portugal
Rethinking Landscape, MNHA – Musée national d’histoire et d’art Luxembourg.
Scandinavian Photography, MIA Fair, Superstudio Maxi, Milano, Italy.
Market Art Fair, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Liljevalchs, Stockholm, Sweden.
Unbound – BREAKING THE BOUNDRIES & MULTIDISCIPLINARY, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Unseen, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Open Art Lausitz, Atelierhof Werenzhain, Elbe-Elster, Germany.
Rethinking Nature/Rethinking Landscape, European Month of Photography Arendt Award 2021, Arendt House, Luxembourg.
C’est Extra, Les Nuits Secrètes, Aulnoye-Aymeries, France.
Sea Pieces – Facts and Fiction, Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung, Berlin, Germany.
Luminous Matter (Solo exhibition), Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Berlin, German.
The RATP invites, works presented on 11 Metro stations in Paris, France.
Naturen som plats – verk ur samlingen Varbergs Konsthall, Varberg, Sweden.
Circulation(s), Le Centquatre-Paris, Paris, France.
Sculptural Landscape, part 3, Galleri Format, Malmö, Sweden.

2020

Sea Pieces – Facts and Fiction, Museum der Westküste, Föhr, Germany.
See Beyond the Sea, PhEST festival internazionale di fotografia e arte, Monopoli, Italy.
Vista Point. Re-Connecting Nature, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam e.V. Germany.
I relation till – en utställning om rum och plats, Centrum för Fotografi, Stockholm, Sweden.

2019

Photo Miyota – Asama International Photo Festival Miyota, Japan
n e w f l e s h, Light Factory, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
The World around You: Contemporary Art from the Collection, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg, Sweden
Unseen, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Woven Matters, Machinegebouw, Unseen, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
BLAST! Photo Festival, Sandwell, UK
It came from the North, PT Jakarta Land and ISA Art Advisory, World Trade Center, Jakarta, Indonesia.
Sculptural Landscape, part 2, Gallery Nouva, Bodø, Norway.
Publicerat – Fotoboken i Sverige, Centrum för fotografi (CFF), Stockholm, Sweden.
Haute Photographie, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

2018

In dialogue with Strömholm, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Berlin, Germany.
Brownie projects, Showroom, Shanghai, China.
Nuclear, Like the Family, Feast Gallery, Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA.
Photography Books in Sweden, Past and Future, Institut suédois, Paris, France.
PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai, Brownie projects, Shanghai, China.
4K ULTRA HD (Solo exhibition) Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Berlin, Germany.
New Chic, Riga Photomont, Riga, Latvia.
Sculptural Landscape, The Plantation Journal, Copenhagen Photo Festival, Denmark.
Publicerat – Fotoboken i Sverige, Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Haute Photographie, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Fotografiska, Stockholm, Sweden.
The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth (Solo exhibition at two venues) Konstfrämjandet Bergslagen & Blackdoor Gallery, Örebro, Sweden.
Haute Photographie, Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

2017

Nordic Stories, Toronto, Canada.
《观念集》, Mao Space, Shanghai, China.
Ordinary, Photoville, New York, USA.
Bling Bling Baby, Museum Hilversum, The Netherlands.
Fotofestival Łódź, Łódź, Poland.
The Collection, Fries-museum, the Netherlands
Haute Photographie, Rotterdam, Holland
Wish You Were Here – Mental Health Club, Space 15 Twenty, Los Angeles, USA
BLING BLING BABY!, NRW-Forum, Dusseldorf, Germany

2016

Ordinary, KK Outlet, London, UK
Paris Photo, Grundemark Nilsson Gallery, Paris, France.
The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth, Grundemark Nilsson Gallery (solo exhibition), Stockholm, Sweden.
Freezing Point, Grundemark Nilsson Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden.
Art Souterrain, Montreal, Canada.

2015

Grundemark Nilsson Gallery, Scope Art Fair, Miami, USA.
Du är redan här, Rymd Konstrum, Stockholm, Sweden.
Grundemark Nilsson Gallery, Unseen Photo Fair, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Grundemark Nilsson Gallery (solo presentation), Photo Basel, Switzerland.
Summer Show, ANNAELLE GALLERY, Stockholm, Sweden.
Steps Forward: Facing the Arctic Climate,House of Sweden, Washington D.C. USA.
Macrocosmi, Grundemark Nilsson Gallery, Bologna, Italy.

2014

NO.27. ANNAELLE GALLERY, Stockholm, Sweden.
Grundemark Nilsson Gallery, Context Art Fair, Miami, USA.
Grundemark Nilsson Gallery (solo presentation), Unseen Photo Fair, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Blog Re-Blog, Austin Center for Photography, Austin, USA.
De: Stockholm, Rollergirl, Gallery Artligue, Paris, France.
Frames 2014, GI – Glasgow International,
Book Watching Humans Watching in The Visible – Contemporary Swedish Photography, Artipelag, Sweden.
Photography Now, IMA Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
Swedish Photography, Aipad, The Armory Show, New York, USA.

2013

Nyförvärv, The Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden.
Swedish Photography, Context Art Fair, Miami, USA.
Operakällaren (solo exhibition), Stockholm, Sweden.
Nordic Tones, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Radical Fictions, IV, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil.
Becoming Wilderness (solo exhibition), Swedish Photography, Berlin, Germany.
Night Contact, London, UK
(solo exhibition) Landskrona Fotofestival, Sweden.
Blog Re-Blog, SIGNAL Gallery, New York, USA.
Watching Humans Watching (solo exhibition), Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, Hamburg, Germany.
Swedish Photography, SP-ARTE, São Paulo, Brazil.
Becoming Wilderness (solo exhibition), Green is Gold, Copenhagen, Denmark.

2012

Swedish Photography, Context Art Fair, Miami, USA.
Swedish Photography, SP-ARTE, São Paulo, Brazil.
To Sweden, Diplomat, Philadelphia, USA.

2011

Watching Humans Watching (solo exhibition), Swedish Photography, Berlin, Germany.
Corso #3, Detroit, Stockholm, Sweden.

2010

Schwedische Botschaft, Berlin, Germany.
Corso #1, Trikåfabriken, Stockholm, Sweden.
Moving Art, touring exhibition, Sweden.
Re:public Service photofestival. Stockholm, Sweden (4x8m² projections and posters).

2009

Rotating gallery, New york, USA.
Looking for Love, Moderna Museet, Studion, Stockholm, Sweden.
Looking for Love, CFF, Stockholm, Sweden.
Re:public Service photofestival. Stockholm (4x8m² projections and prints)

2008

Ode to the Animal. Capricious Space. New York, USA.
Retina.The Photomuseum. Sundsvall, Sweden.
PUB house, Stockholm, Sweden.
Summer reading, Capricious Space, New York, USA.

Collections

Moderna Museet / Modern Art Museum, Stockholm, Sweden.
The Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden.
Statens Konstråd / Public Art Agency Sweden.
Fries Museum, The Netherlands.
Arendt & Art, Luxembourg.
Nya Karolinska Solna / Stockholms Landsting, Sweden.
Akademiska Sjukhuset / Uppsala Landsting, Sweden.
Stockholm Konst, Sweden.
Varberg Kommun/County, Sweden.
Private collections in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Germany, Netherlands, UK, Switzerland, Slovakia, USA, Canada, China, Brazil and Puerto Rico.

Books

Extensions, 2024

Publisher: Art & Theory Publishing Sweden
Text by: Olga Krzeszowiec Malmsten.
Language: English.
Design: Sepidar Hosseini.
280×220 mm portrait hardbound.
112 pages.
ISBN: 9789198870558

The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth, 2016

Publisher: Kerber Verlag, Germany.
Texts by: Brad Feuerhelm, Kim Knoppers.
Language:  English.
Design: Sepidar Hosseini.
297×347 mm landscape hardbound.
96 pages.
78 fullcolour image pages, 18 bw textpages.
60 colour photographs, 24 bw photographs.
ISBN 978-3-7356-0311-1
Winner of Svensk Bokkonst 2016 /Swedish Book Art award 2016
Nominated to The Swedish Photo Book Price 2018.
(Sold out)

Visible Spectrum, 2014

Publisher: Conveyor Arts, USA.
Design: Sepidar Hosseini.
Part of Visible Spectrum artists’ books series

Watching Humans Watching, 2012

Publisher:  KEHRER VERLAG, Germany.
Texts by:  Alexxa Gotthardt, Camilla Årlin, Dr Matthias Harder, Jonas Larsen.
Language:  English.
Design:  H-T Nilsson & Rasmus Svensson.
200 x 245 mm portrait hardbound with linen cover.
104 pages.
80 fullcolour image pages, 24 bw textpages.
55 colour photographs, 1 bw photograph.
ISBN 978-3-86828-267-2
Winner of The Swedish Photo Book Price 2012.
Nominated to The German Photo Book Price 2013.
(Sold out)

Grants

Grant, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Sven Ivar and Siri Lind fund, 2024.
Nominated to the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2022.
Winner of European Month of Photography Arendt Award 2021.
Grant, Swedish Arts Grants Committe, 2020. Sweden.
Nominated to The Swedish Photo Book Price 2018, Sweden.
Grant, The Swedish Authors’ Fund, 2017. Sweden.
Winner of Swedish Book Art Price 2017, Sweden.
Grant, Swedish Arts Grants Committe, 2014. Sweden.
Grant, The Swedish Authors’ Fund, 2013. Sweden.
Nominated to The German Photo Book Award, 2013, Germany.
Winner of The Swedish Photo Book Price 2012, Sweden.
Nominated to Foam Paul Huf Award, 2012, The Netherlands.
Grant, Svenska kulturfonden, 2010, Finland.
Grant, Stiftelsen Dialog, 2008, Sweden.

Public Installations

Passage, Fleminggatan 14, KLP Fastigheter, Stockholm, Sweden, 2024.
SÄS, Psykiatrins Kvarter, Borås, Sweden, 2022
AWL, Akademiska hus, Chalmers, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2020
BUP, Stockholm, Sweden, 2019
Akademiska Sjukhuset, Uppsala, Sweden, 2019
Whiteout, underpass, Nacka, Stockholm, 2018
Stockholm Sjukhem, Stockholm, Sweden, 2017
Health Center, Stenhagen, Uppsala, Sweden, 2017

Selected Publications

2024

The Overview Book, Atmos, USA

2023

Peripheral Vision: Images From the Fringe of Europe, Art and Theory, Sweden.
Fotografiska Magazine, Sweden.

2022

Fotografi, Norway.
Nature Future, Exhibition catalogue, the Institut Francais, Czech Republic.
Eltern Family, Germany.
Sixtysix Magazine, USA.
Family Portraits Exhibition zine, Sternenpassage, Vienna, Austria.
Rethinking Nature/Rethinking Landscape, Exhibition Catalogue, Foto Wien, Austria.

2021

Vouge Scandinavia, Issue 3.
Ordinary Magazine, Issue 10 – CD.
Exhibition Catalogue, Family Portrait, OFF Bratislava, Slovakia.
Exhibition Catalogue, Imago Lisboa, Portugal.
Dialogue—21 Artists Who Reshaped Contemporary Photography, Joanna Fu, Zhejiang Photographic Press, China.
Exhibition Catalogue, c’est extra, France.
Exhibition Catalogue, Circulation(s), Le Centquatre, Paris, France.
Exhibition Catalogue, Sculptural Landscapes, vol 3, Sweden.
Sydsvenskan, Sweden.

2020

Dazed China, China.
Exhibition Catalouge, Sea Pieces – Facts and Fiction, Germany.

2019

Asama Photofestival, Exhibition Catalouge, IMA, Japan.
newflesh, Gnomic Book, USA.
Sculptural landscapes, exhibition catalogue

2018

O Feminino, Amarello, Brazil.
GUP Magazine, The Netherlands.
Ordinary Magazine, Issue 6 – AIR.

2017

Unseen Magazine, The Netherlands.
Too Good to be Photographed, Estonia.
CityZine magazine, China.
Swedish Book Art Award 2016, The Royal Library, Sweden.
On Display Magazine, Germany.
Perdiz Magazine, Spain.

2016

BLING BLING BABY!, Hate Cantz, Germany.
IMA Magazine, Japan.
Artlover, Sweden.
SvD, Sweden.
Ordinary Magazine, Issue 2 – Sponge.
The Forumist, Sweden.

2015

En bok om en bild, Sweden.
Of The Afternoon, UK.
Glamcult magazine, The Netherlands.

2014

Sculptural Landscape, The Plantation Journal, UK.
De: Stockholm, Rollergirl, The Netherlands.
PERDIZ Magazine, Spain.
Photography Now, IMA Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
The Visible – Contemporary Swedish Photography, Artipelag, Sweden.
Loft-The Scandinavian Bookazine, Sweden

2013

Little Finger, Sweden.
Amarello, Brazil.
Conveyor Magazine, USA.
CONST Literary (P)review, Sweden.
Rodeo Magazine, Sweden.
Bänken #6, Sweden.
IMA, Japan.
P.Y.T. Pretty Young Thing, Lodret Vandret, Denmark.

2012

Harper’s Magazine, September, USA.
Fotografisk Tidskrift #4, Sweden.
Swedish Photography, Two, Catalouge, Germany.
Vidvinkel Magazine #3, Sweden.
Bamboo, Brazil.
Norr Magazine, Germany.
Philosophie Magazine, Paris, France.
To Sweden, Diplomat Pamphlet, Philadelphia, USA.
Book cover, Hallon och Bensin, Blå Blixt, Ny Poesi, Brombergs, Sweden.

2011

Le Monde Diplomatique, France/Germany.
PWR #6, Book, Germany.
La Fotografia, Spain.
BLINK Contemporary Photography Magazine #8, Korea.
Photo Presse, Germany.
Fotografisk Tidskrift #5, Sweden.
Not A Toy: Fashioning Radical Characters, Germany.
Kinki magazine, Switzerland.
Wilderness Poster I, Turukame bookshop, Tokyo Artist Book Fair, Japan.

2010

Ein Magazin über Orte, No.7, Meer, Germany.
I Love You Magazine, The fariy-tale issue, Germany.
Re:public Service Photo Issue, Sweden.

2009

The Exposure Project Book Issue 4. USA.
Vidvinkel Magazine #2. Sweden.
The Collectors Guide to Emerging Art Photography #1. Humble Arts Foundation. USA.
Motiv#14 The end, Sweden.
Re:public Service Photo Issue, Sweden.
DN, Looking for love, Sweden.
PWR #1, Poster, Sweden.

2008

Capricious #8, The Animal Issue. A2 poster. USA.

Selected Web

2024

Estonian TV.
Phoblographer, USA.
Fisheye Magazine, France.
Focus on nordic photography, See-Zeen.

2023

Aesthetica Magazine.
Stirworld.

2021

Vouge Scandinavia.
Shift Magazine, Japan.
Video. EMoP Arendt Award 2021.
Radio. EMoP Arendt Award 2021.
RATP.
A corner with.

2020

Folha de S.Paulo.
Gobe Magazine.
Wepresent / Wetransfer.

2019

IMA Magazine.
Sleek Magazine.

2018

PH Museum.

2017

Konbini, Cheese.
Vice.
Foam.

2016

Zero Magazine.
American Suburb X.
C-print journal.
The Adventure Handbook.
Newfound.

2015

Artsy.

2014

Hot ‘N’ Gold magazine.
Paper-Journal.

2013

Monday Art.
Visual Maniac.
Kopenhagen Artguide.

2012

Swedish Public TV (SVT), Sweden.
SFF, Stefan Nilsson – Smart fotografi på nygamla vägar (in swedish).
SFF, Fotobokspriset (in swedish).
Conveyor, Aubrey Hays.
Unless you will #20.
NABROAD NEWS.
MEDESIGNMAG.

2011

TIME lightbox, Alexander Ho – Human Behavior: An Exploration of People Watching.
Phaidon, Sally Ashley-Cound – Inka and Niclas change the landscape.
Vidvinkel, Man and Nature Issue.

Other

Talks

Book presentation, CHART Book & Print Fair, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2024
Artist presentation, Gamleby Folkhögskola, Sweden. 2021
Artist presentation, Örebro Länsmuseum, Sweden. 2018
Artist presentation, FotobokGbg, Gothenburg, Sweden. 2017
Artist presentation, Fridhems Folkhögskola, Svalöv, Sweden. 2017
Artist presentation, Grundemark Nilsson Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden. 2016
Artist presentation, Konstsällskapet, Stockholm. Sweden. 2015
Artist presentation, SAK -Swedish Association for Art, Stockholm. Sweden. 2014
Artist presentation, Unseen Photo Fair, Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2014
Artist presentation, Norrlandsdagarna, Umeå, Sweden. 2013
Artist presentation, Sandviken Konsthall, Sandviken, Sweden. 2013
Artist presentation, Berghs School of Communication, Stockholm, Sweden. 2013
Artist presentation, Fotoskolan, Gothenburg, Sweden. 2013
Artist presentation and Book Event, Gothenburg Book Fair, Sweden. 2012
Artist presentation and workshop, Photodeparntment, St Petersburg, Russia. 2012
Book presentation, Motto, Berlin, Germany. 2012
Artist presentation, Re:public service photofetival. Sweden. 2010

Book Fairs

CHART Book & Print Fair, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2024
FotobokGbg, Gothenburg, Sweden. 2017
NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, New York, USA. 2014
Gothenburg Book Fair, Gothenburg, Sweden. 2012
CCNY Art Book Fair, New York, USA. 2012
Turukame bookshop, Tokyo Artist Book Fair, Japan. 2011

How does one summarize a practice spanning nearly two decades?

Write about ebb, flow, and Google. Palm trees backlit by the sun. Buttercups and cow parsley becoming the cosmos. Slumbering snow-covered winter landscapes. Northern lights. Nightly walks to a chosen location with sleepy children in your arms.
Write about travels. Along the local roadside. To Finland. To the ends of the earth. The ever-growing mass of nature images that numbs us.
Write about the visual perception and the dissolution of the static surface of photography. Mental snapshots and physical pictures. Objects born from photography, but that have become something of their own kind, free from categorization. All testify to short excerpts of events, in actual places, at a certain time. Moments from a shared practice, a shared life. What is now also their children’s reality.

The Violent Power of Photography

The photographic medium possesses a violent power. Photography creates beauty, but it can also consume the nature it depicts—like the generic image of a palm tree at sunset that has adorned printed calendars, beach towels, and posters since the 80s. Consumed by popular culture, the motif became so saturated that it still tends to touch on kitsch aesthetics. As a result, viewing an actual palm tree at sunset can seem trivial to someone who has seen too many reproduced depictions. The motif is too reminiscent of a photograph.
In their lens-based practice, Inka and Niclas Lindergård recurrently delve into the realm of the overly consumed portrayals of nature. Throughout their work, the artist duo has investigated the mechanics of vision and our relationship with nature as depicted through the camera lens. Despite classical training in the photographic medium, there is a constant urge to challenge its conventions, to playfully explore what photography can be in the encounter with new materials and forms. Today, photography and the photographic gaze have become so prevalent that most of us now possess a developed visual perception. We know at increasingly younger ages when the lighting conditions are optimal for a certain type of image, or from which angle a landscape is most ideally depicted. With the help of digital platforms, nature photographs are consumed in a way never before seen. We have access to innumerable sunsets, seascapes, and depictions of the most magnificent northern lights—to the extent that the eye becomes saturated with the heightened beauty. The abundance simply numbs us. How does this affect our perception?

Heightened Nature in Spin

4K Ultra HD

The representation of nature has varied across different times and cultures. A common theme in many of these depictions is that flora and fauna are often seen as part of something divine. This is especially true in contemporary secular Swedish society, where nature is attributed almost healing and religious qualities. David Thurfjell, professor of religious studies, argues that our secular societal development is leaning towards defining religion as a space for profound existential experiences. Given this definition, nature becomes the place where many Swedes feel they connect with an existential dimension.
With the understanding of nature’s elevated status as the obvious place for existential reflections among the majority of Swedes, it’s not hard to imagine that the work of Inka & Niclas might provoke. Through their lens-based practice, they depict a handcrafted manipulated image of this, in many eyes, sacred sphere. Do we have the right to exalt something that is already sublime? The artists are well aware that they move on the border between the (heightened) beauty and the point where it can tip into absurdity. At the core is a genuine interest in the aesthetics of popular culture and its impact on our perception of nature.
Enhancing the most natural thing we can imagine—nature itself—can be seen by many as a somewhat offensive act. The clearly altered color scales in Inka & Niclas’s series of works (manipulated during exposure, it should be noted) can be unsettling because they remind us that we are part of the very same movement. Most of us can likely catch ourselves beautifying, filtering, and removing the drab color scales from images. We simply adapt the representation of nature to suit our own saturated tastes.

The slumbering calm that falls over a winter landscape in dawn light. Its snow-covered trees (could they be birch and pine?) seem heavy, as if in a resting state. A delicate shimmer rests over the motif. Hubba Bubba and sickly-sweet rosé wine. A landscape view in color schemes so elaborate they must be manipulated. A depiction of a heightened nature in spin.

The title 4K Ultra HD refers to the terms 4K and Ultra High Definition used to describe the resolution and pixel density of digital screens. The increasingly superlative terms depict a rampant development of the digital screen’s image quality. It can be seen as an expression of our time’s aim for a visually elevated presence. The same type of striving for an enhanced reality is, according to author and journalist Maria Stepanova, embedded in the DNA of photography. According to her, photography is not primarily intended to preserve the real. Despite its documentary qualities, its logic is more like when people prepare a little package for the survivors, or compile messages for extraterrestrials: a few things that distinguish humanity, an anthology of the best we have, an attempt to describe ourselves by listing a few highlights, Shakespeare – Mona Lisa – the cigar – penicillin – Kalashnikov. When search algorithms list Internet’s most popular images in descending order, the top categories that we tend to download are those images of a deceiving beauty. Whether a digital image portrays the subject truthfully or not is irrelevant.
Despite many of the motifs in the 4K Ultra HD series being confusingly similar to generic nature views, the artist duo could not use that type of ready-made images in their work. For them, photography has a connection to a physical place and event. What is depicted must have taken place in front of the camera lens. Even though the body has increasingly disappeared from the image, it is still present in their work. The perspective in the early photo series Watching Humans Watching from 2008—where people look at magnificent nature views—has shifted from observing others to a concentrated studying of their own photographic gaze. Inka & Niclas’s work is not primarily driven by exploration—they do not want to report, nor seek definitive answers to given questions. Instead, the artist duo depicts their participation in the viewing of nature that they previously have also pointed out in others.
The series also consists of sculptural elements—sharply cropped excerpts from photographs that have emerged from the two-dimensional and become amorphous shapes. The dissimulation of the image reaches yet another dimension in the meeting between the photograph and the print surface—hand-sculpted and softly curved plasters. Dipped in a dissolved fluid version of the photograph, the irregular plasters further abstract the motif. This procedure is rooted in a sensory exploration that must be liberated from the initial conceptualization that once sparked the process. What follows is a profound investigation into the material.

The Shared Journey as Ritual

Family Portraits

Although the body has disappeared from the image, it asserts itself more clearly in other forms and materials. The series in which the body is perhaps most clearly addressed—in its anonymity—is Family Portraits, which the artist duo initiated the same year their first son was born.
Family Portraits is a collection of self-portraits taken during the artists’ travels to idyllic panoramic settings across the world. The series is a continuous long-term project and an investigation of how we perceive and preserve our memory of nature through mediated images, but also how we use the mediation of nature as self-identification. The four characters pose in front of grand vistas—a breathtaking fjord panorama at dusk; a snow-covered landscape with polar stratospheric clouds as the backdrop; a meadow at night; ramsons in full bloom.
It is a project that has taken on an almost ritual significance. Traveling to scenic locations; the persistent search for the right visual focus; spending time there to understand the location’s conditions; the meticulous observation of the exact moments when dawn and dusk occur, for it is during these brief moments of time that most of the photography is carried out. During the shoot, all four individuals put on reflective suits, collectively move to the right vantage point, and position themselves in front of the camera. Stand still. Repeat the procedure if the photograph did not turn out as they envisioned.
Initially, Inka & Niclas thought of the ongoing project as a way to experience nature through the camera lens. Today, Family Portraits seems more existential. Again, there is the idea of the image as a shard of time. The initially three anonymous bodies have become four. With each new addition to the series, the children’s ever-growing silhouettes are depicted—a subtle reminder of the fleeting nature of time. The function of the suits erases facial features. Where the bodies should have occupied the photograph, there is now a void—reflective surfaces for the viewer to fill. One of the driving forces behind the project is undoubtedly the universal idea of establishing a chronology in pictures—the classic family album, which solidifies our connection to our loved ones.
As of this writing, the series has been ongoing for nearly a decade, and the conversation around the photographs seems to shift in tune with its time. Today’s prevailing collapse of a universal effort for the environment casts the remarkable nacreous cloud in Family Portrait XIV (2020) in a new light. Nacreous clouds, or polar stratospheric clouds, form in the stratosphere in polar regions and play an active role in the formation of ozone holes over Antarctica. A natural wonder that testifies to its decay.

Finding the Universe in the Roadside Clutter

Luminous Matter

From depicting grand nature views to the careful composition of a buttercup by the roadside. The contemporary perceived affinity for nature is not a result of our closeness to it, but rather an echo of our estrangement from it. When we no longer live directly in or near nature, forests, and fields as we once did, it becomes a projection surface for our nostalgia and fantasies. Thus, our collective enthusiasm for nature can be assumed to be an urban phenomenon. In Luminous Matter, the artists have narrowed down their perspective, both in terms of subject matter and geography. Inka & Niclas continue their examination of nature as a cultural construct, but the focus now lies on milieus connected to the artists’ own childhood and heritage. Luminous Matter centers around depictions of wildflowers and weeds found closer to the artists’ native and local surroundings. The exploration through the camera has led the duo’s interest in several wildflower species found along the roadside in Sweden—flowers so common in the Swedish scenery that they almost go unnoticed in our collective consciousness.
Biologists and scholars James H. Wandersee and Elisabeth E. Schussler have introduced the term plant blindness. They define the term as the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s environment and as the misguided anthropocentric ranking of plants as inferior to animals, and thus as unworthy of consideration. Those persons afflicted with this condition exhibit symptoms such as thinking of plants as merely the backdrop of animal life and failing to see, notice, or focus attention on plants in one’s daily life.
In the series Luminous Matter, Inka & Niclas challenge this syndrome by literally spotlighting the plant species buttercup, cow parsley, and woodland geranium. The camera lens partly functions as a binocular or a magnifying glass—transforming the flora by the roadside from an unseen backdrop to an illuminated nocturnal scene. A microcosm strikingly similar to the infinite space of luminous matter found in images from NASA’s digital photo archives.
All the plants are considered weeds, contrasting with the magical glow that surrounds and accentuates their fragile features. Like the focal point of magical realism, there is a depiction of reality, enhanced by supernatural elements. The work transcends the borders of the local context and its site specificity, offering a view into an alternate cosmos in the otherwise overlooked roadside clutter.

The Dissolution of Photography Between Layers of Keratin, Emulsion Fluids, and Pigment

Extensions

Throughout their work, Inka & Niclas have consistently explored the impact of popular culture on the relationship between humans and nature. A popular cultural activity that they themselves are part of and often depict (which, incidentally, has developed in close relation to photography) is tourism’s influence on nature representations. In the series Extensions, the artist duo portrays paradise-like environments on the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, which mostly consist of rainforest and white sandy beaches. Located off the coast of West Africa, the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe is Africa’s second smallest state by area. The environments may seem familiar, but the fact is that most of us have never seen them except in photographs. For the project Extensions, the artist duo identified the most common vistas of the two islands on the Internet and sought out the same places. The scenes are enhanced by a light glimmer—an effect of the camera flash being unconventionally directed back at the camera lens. As if the hyper-romantic environment didn’t already have enough of beauty, the scene is elevated by the suggestive shimmer, hinting at the consumption of nature depictions and the circulation of its images as a commodity.

Sun-drenched morning in the car on the island of Príncipe. A hint of movement in an otherwise slumbering, calm village. Gently washed hair extensions dancing in the wind, hung out to dry on a clothesline. The morning light filtering through the strands of hair.

A fleeting memory etched on the retina that led to experimenting with new materials. Unusually, there is only a memory from this occasion—at that moment, it felt too intrusive and revealing to document someone else’s hair extensions. There is a tacit agreement that an extension should not be displayed until it adorns a head. Hair is charged. Intimate. Something that has grown on a body. Like images on an influencer’s Instagram account, hair also builds identity. Healthy and thick, perfectly straightened, it is an expression of the drive to control one’s resources. A capital of youth.
Inka & Niclas approach hair as a given material for experimentation with both movement and transparency, but there is also a fascination with the layers of connotations that hair extensions evoke in many popular cultural contexts. Braids and weaving. The rather iconic wig master Tomihiro Kono’s playful creations. The material’s desirable properties are also its biggest problem—working with unpredictability and movement makes the process a constant experimentation. Since photo printing on human hair is a relatively untested technique, there are no previous templates to rely on. Earlier test prints that did not turn out as the artists had hoped must be removed. The hair is carefully washed out, hung to dry, and gently prepared again. In the experimental work process, the artist duo paradoxically returns to the traditional photographic techniques that have been a gateway to their work with the photographic medium.
It is in the nature of photography that its subject is fixed—a fragment of an event. By using such an unruly material as human hair, the artists dissolve the static surface of photography. It simply cannot be controlled or directed too much. The result is an artwork that moves with the slightest breeze and body movements. Freed from the static, the objects are no longer photographs, nor are they sculptures. They stand outside these categorizations. With impressions from rainforests and sandy beaches, they become subdued and dreamlike totems. Between the layers of keratin, emulsion fluids, and pigment rests the anonymous presence of the individual who once bore the hair, but also of the artists, whose own appearance strikingly resembles the processed locks.

Digital Scrap and Circular Usage

Sunset Photography

What do you do with an album that has preserved everything indiscriminately, the entire overwhelming past? Photography gravitates toward an extreme where the whole life is to be fixed, where the entire span of life is to be measured in its real length; one writes tirelessly, but no one reads what is written.
Maria Stepanova
In the book In Memory of Memory, Maria Stepanova writes about the challenge that follows the possibility of mass storage in digital photography. In the vast amount of material on hard drives, unlike the increasingly rare physical family album, there is rarely any active selection. Once again, the sheer volume of photography obstructs active seeing. This phenomenon has been a starting point for Inka & Niclas in the sculptural series Sunset Photography. The project arose from the desire to revisit the digital scrap found on the artists’ numerous hard drives. Over the years, the duo has pragmatically established an extensive image bank—it is simply very cumbersome to clean out a hard drive. Most of the saved digital photographs have never been looked at because Inka & Niclas often know at the moment the right picture is taken, that it is the one. In their work with Sunset Photography, they revisited the archives, hoping to find raw material with other qualities than those they usually look for. It is not a matter of direct reuse, as most of the images on the hard drives have not been used before, but the work process still becomes retrospective.
Saturated sunsets and landscape motifs are printed on textiles and covered with layers of resin. Weighed down by the plastics, they yield to gravity—as if the photograph has given way and fallen to the ground like a used wet towel. A reminder of the use and consumption of nature views. The motif becomes distorted, but the gaze can still somewhat discern what is glimpsed between layers of wet folds.
Philosopher Jonna Bornemark describes the artist’s work as a process that involves sensitivity to the sensory aspects of a situation: how something looks, feels, sounds, and smells. It is within this sensory experience that the artistic process takes place. In a time where we easily drift into abstractions and generalizations, and where words often take over entirely, we must train ourselves to stay rooted in the sensory impressions of the here and now. In viewing Inka & Niclas’ work, it is striking how many ways they engage with the mechanics of vision: composing monumental nature views; zooming in on seemingly overlooked fragments of local flora; dissolving the motif in the meeting between photography and unusual materials; playing with the hidden in the sculptural works.
All are ways to seek to awaken the dormant, habitual seeing again. Do you have access to your perception? Can you see the cosmos in the clutter by the roadside?

Hur sammanfattar man en praktik som spänner över närmare två decennier?

Skriv om ebb, flod och Google. Palmer i motljus. Smörblomma och Hundkäx som blir kosmos.
Slumrande snötäckta vinterlandskap. Norrsken. Nattliga vandringar till utvald plats med sömndruckna barn i famnen.

Skriv om resandet. Längs den lokala vägrenen. Till Finland. Till världens ände. Den ständigt växande massan av naturbilder som gör oss avtrubbade.

Skriv om bildseendet och upplösningen av fotografiets statiska yta. Mentala snapshots och fysiska bilder. Objekt sprungna ur fotografi, men som blivit något i sitt eget slag, fria från kategoriseringar. Alla vittnar de om korta utsnitt av händelser, på faktiska platser, vid en viss tid. Ögonblick från en gemensam praktik, ett delat liv. Det som numera även är deras barns verklighet.

Fotografiets våldsamma makt

Det fotografiska mediet besitter en våldsam makt. Fotografiet skapar skönhet, men det kan även förbruka den natur som skildras– likt den generiska motivbilden palm i solnedgång som allt sedan 80-talet ofta prytt tryckta kalendrar, badlakan och affischer. Konsumerat av populärkulturen blev motivet så saturerat att det fortfarande anses tangera kitschens estetik. En följd av detta blir att betraktandet av en faktisk palm i solnedgång kan tyckas banalt för den som sett för många återgivna skildringar. Motivet påminner alltför mycket om ett fotografi.

I sin praktik återkommer Inka och Niclas Lindergård ständig till de överkonsumerande naturskildringarna. Genomgående har konstnärsduon arbetat med seendets mekanik och människans förhållande till naturen skildrat genom kamerans lins. Trots klassisk skolning i det fotografiska mediet finns en konstant drivkraft att utmana dess konventioner, att lekfullt utröna vad fotografi kan vara i mötet med nya material och former. Idag har fotografiet och den fotografiska blicken slagit igenom så storskaligt att de allra flesta av oss numera innehar ett utmejslat bildséende. Vi vet i allt yngre ålder när det är ultimata ljusförhållanden för en visst typ av bild, eller från vilken vinkel ett landskap skildras som mest idealiskt. Med hjälp av digitala plattformar konsumeras naturfotografier på ett sätt som aldrig tidigare. Vi har tillgång till ett överflöd av solnedgångar, palmer i motljus och skildringar av de mest fantastiska norrsken – så till den grad att ögat blir mättat av den upptrissade skönheten. Redundansen gör oss helt enkelt avtrubbade. Vad gör det med vårt seende?

Upphöjd natur i spinn

4K Ultra HD

Representationen av naturen har skiftat genom olika tider och kulturer. En gemensam nämnare i många av dessa skildringar är att flora och fauna ofta betraktas som något gudomligt. Detta är särskilt påtagligt i det samtida sekulära svenska samhället, där naturen tillskrivs närmast helande och religiösa egenskaper. David Thurfjell, professor i religionsvetenskap, hävdar att vår sekulära samhällsutveckling tenderar att definiera religion som ett rum för djupgående existentiella upplevelser. Givet denna definition blir naturen den plats där många svenskar känner att de anknyter till en existentiell dimension.
Med förståelse för naturens upphöjda status som den självklara platsen för existentiella reflektioner, är det inte svårt att föreställa sig att Inka & Niclas verk kan provocera. Genom sin linsbaserade praktik skildrar de en fabricerad bild av denna, i mångas ögon, heliga sfär. Har vi rätten att förhöja något som redan är sublimt? Konstnärerna är väl medvetna om att de rör sig på gränsen mellan den (upptrissade) skönheten och punkten där den kan tippa över i det absurda. I kärnan finns ett genuint intresse för populärkulturens estetik och dess inverkan på vår uppfattning av naturen.
Att förstärka det mest naturliga vi kan föreställa oss – naturen själv – kan av många uppfattas som en närmast stötande handling. De tydligt uppdragna färgskalorna i Inka & Niclas verkserie (manipulerade under själva exponeringen, bör noteras) kan skava eftersom de påminner oss om att vi är en del av samma rörelse. De flesta av oss kan sannolikt ertappa oss själva med att försköna, filtrera och avlägsna de gråa färgskalorna från bilder. Vi anpassar helt enkelt representationen av naturen för att passa vårt eget mättade tycke.

Det slumrande lugnet som faller över ett vinterlandskap i gryningsljus. Dess snötäckta träd (kan det vara björk och tall?) tycks tunga, som försatta i ett vilande tillstånd. Över motiven vilar ett skärt skimmer. Hubba bubba och sliskigt rosévin. Undersköna landskapsvyer i färgskalor så elaborerade att de måste vara manipulerade. Skildringar av en uppskruvad natur i spinn.

Titeln 4K Ultra HD refererar till termerna 4K och Ultra High Definition som används för att ange digitala skärmars bildupplösning och pixeltäthet. Begreppens allt starkare superlativ skildrar en skenande utveckling av den digitala skärmens bildkvalitet. Den kan ses som ett uttryck för vår tids strävande efter en visuellt upphöjd verklighet. Samma typ av strävan efter en förhöjd verklighet finns enligt författaren och journalisten Maria Stepanova inbäddad i fotografiets dna. Enligt henne syftar fotografiet inte primärt till att bevara det egentliga. Trots de dokumentära egenskaperna är dess logik mer som då folk gör i ordning något litet paket åt efterlevande, eller ställer samman budskap till utomjordingar: några saker som utmärker människan, en antologi över det bästa man har, ett försök att beskriva sig själv genom att rada upp några höjdpunkter, Shakespeare – Mona Lisa – cigarren – pencillinet – Kalasjnikov. När sökalgoritmer listar Internets mest populära bilder i fallande ordning, är de översta kategorierna som vi tenderar att ladda ner de bilder av en vilseledande skönhet. Huruvida en digital bild skildrar motivet verklighetstroget eller inte är inte det som i första hand eftersträvas.

Trots att många av motiven i serien 4K Ultra HD är förvillande lika generiska naturvyer skulle konstnärsduon inte kunna använda den typen av färdiga bilder i sitt arbete. Fotografiet har för dem en koppling till en fysisk plats och händelse – det är en skärva av tid. Det som skildras ska ha utspelat sig för kamerans lins. Kroppen är högst närvarande i deras arbete, trots att den alltmer försvunnit ur bild. Perspektivet i den tidiga bildserien Watching Humans Watching från 2008 – där människor betraktar vidunderliga naturvyer – har skiftat från ett iakttagande av andra till ett koncentrerat observerande av den egna fotografiska blicken. Inka och Niclas arbete har inte en utforskande drivkraft – de vill inte redovisa, inte heller söka slutgiltiga svar på givna frågor. De vill skildra sin delaktighet i det betraktande av naturen som de tidigare också pekat på hos andra.

Verksserien består också av skulpturala element — skarpt beskurna utdrag från fotografier som har vuxit fram ur det tvådimensionella och blivit amorfa former. Förställningen av bilden når ytterligare en dimension i mötet mellan fotografiet och tryckytan – handskulpterade och mjukt böjda gipser. Doppade i en upplöst flytande version av fotografiet abstraherar de oregelbundna objekten motivet ytterligare. Vad som följer är en djupgående undersökning av materialet.

Det gemensamma resandet som ritual

Family Portraits

Om nu kroppen försvunnit ur bild, gör den sig desto tydligare påmind i andra skepnader och material. Den verksserie där kroppen kanske tydligast adresseras – i sin anonymitet – är Family Portraits som konstnärsduon initierade samma år som deras första son föddes.

Family Portraits är en samling självporträtt tagna under konstnärernas resor till idylliska panoramamiljöer över hela världen. Serien är ett pågående projekt och en undersökning av hur vi uppfattar och bevarar vårt minne av naturen genom förmedlade bilder, men också hur vi använder förmedlandet av naturens som självidentifiering. De fyra karaktärerna poserar framför storslagna vyer – ett hisnande fjordpanorama i skymningen; ett snötäckt landskap med pärlemomoln som fond; en äng på natten bland ramslök i blom.

Det är ett projekt som har fått en nästintill rituell betydelse. Resandet till natursköna platser; det ihärdiga sökandet efter det rätta blickfånget; tillbringandet av tid där för att förstå platsens förhållanden. De observerar minutiöst vid vilken tidpunkt som gryningen och skymningen infaller eftersom fotograferandet oftast utförs under dessa korta tillfällen på dygnet. Väl under fotografering ska alla fyra individer iklä sig reflexdräkter, gemensamt ta sig ut till rätt blickpunkt och ta plats framför kameran. Stå stilla. Upprepa proceduren om fotografiet inte blev som de tänkt sig.

Till en början tänkte de på det pågående projektet som ett sätt att uppleva naturen genom kamerans lins. Idag ter sig Family Portraits mer existentiellt. Återigen finns här idén om bilden som ett fryst utsnitt ur tiden. De initialt tre anonyma kroppshyddorna har blivit fyra. För varje ny addition i serien skildras barnens ständigt växande silhuetter – en lågmäld påminnelse om tidens flyktighet. Dräkternas funktion gör att anletsdrag utraderas. Där kropparna skulle tagit plats i fotografiet finns nu ett tomrum – en reflexiv projektionsyta för betraktaren att fylla. En av drivkrafterna i projektet är onekligen den universella idén om att upprätta en kronologi i bilder över sitt närmaste sammanhang. Det klassiska familjealbumet, som befäster vår sammankoppling till våra nära.

I skrivande stund har bildserien pågått i nästan ett decennium, och samtalet kring fotografierna tycks skifta i samklang med sin tid. Dagens rådande kollaps av ett universellt krafttag för miljön ställer det makalösa pärlemomolnet i verket Family Portrait XIV (2020) i ny dager. Pärlemomoln, eller polarstratosfäriskt moln som det också kallas, bildas i stratosfären i polartrakterna och har en aktiv roll i bildandet av ozonhål över Antarktis. Ett naturens underverk som vittnar om dess förfall. Fotografierna tycks dova, mörkare och mer dystopiska än många andra av konstnärsduons verksserier – möjligen ett tecken på att de betraktas i en tid som för många upplevs turbulent och orolig.

Att finna universum vid vägkantens myller

Luminous Matter

Från avbildandet av storslagna naturvyer till det varsamma komponerandet av en smörblomma vid vägrenen. Den samtida upplevda tillvändheten till naturen är inte ett resultat av att vi står den nära, utan snarare ett eko av att vi fjärmats från den. När vi inte längre bor inpå naturen, skogen och markerna som tidigare, så blir den en projektionsyta för vår nostalgi och våra fantasier. Därmed kan vår kollektiva entusiasm för naturen antas vara ett stadsfenomen. I Luminous Matter har Inka & Niclas snävat in sitt perspektiv, både vad gäller ämne och geografi. Konstnärerna fortsätter sin undersökning av naturen som en kulturell konstruktion, men fokus ligger nu på miljöer kopplade till konstnärernas barndom och arv.

Luminous Matter kretsar kring skildringar av vilda blommor och ogräs som hittats närmare konstnärernas lokala omgivningar. Utforskningen genom kameran har lett till duons intresse för flera vilda blommor som återfinns längs vägkanten – blommor så vanliga i det svenska landskapet att de nästan går obemärkta förbi i vårt kollektiva medvetande. Eller har vi helt enkelt inte sett tillräckligt många vilda blommor dokumenterade på våra skärmar för att tolka dem som önskvärda?

Biologerna och forskarna James H. Wandersee och Elisabeth E. Schussler har introducerat termen växtblindhet. De definierar termen som oförmågan att se eller lägga märke till växterna i sin närmiljö och som den missriktade antropocentriska rangordningen av växter som underlägsna djur, och därmed som ovärdiga att beaktas. De personer som lider av detta tillstånd uppvisar symtom som att de tror att växter bara är en bakgrund av djurlivet och att de inte ser, lägger märke till eller fokuserar uppmärksamheten på växter i sitt dagliga liv.

I verkserien Luminous Matters utmanar Inka & Niclas praktik detta syndrom genom att bokstavligt talat rikta strålkastaren på växtarterna Smörblomma, Hundkäx och Midsommarblomster. Kameralinsen får delvis funktionen av en kikare, eller en lupp – floran vid vägkanten från en osynlig bakgrund till en upplyst nattlig scen. Ett mikrokosmos, slående likt den oändliga rymd av belyst materia som återfinns på bilder från NASAs digitala fotoarkiv. Samtliga växter betraktas som ogräs, något som står i kontrast med det magiska skimmer som omger och accentuerar de sköra plantorna. Likt den magiska realismens brännpunkt finns här en skildring av verkligheten, förstärkt av övernaturliga element. Verket överskrider gränserna för det lokala sammanhanget och dess platsspecificitet, och erbjuder en vy in i ett alternativt kosmos i det annars förbisedda myllret vid vägrenen.

Upplösningen av fotografiet mellan lagren av keratin, emulsionsvätskor och pigment

Extentions

Genomgående i sitt arbete har Inka & Niclas har återkommit till populärkulturens inverkan på förhållandet mellan människa och natur. En populärkulturell aktivitet som de själva är del av och ofta skildrar, (och som för övrigt utvecklats i nära förhållande till fotografin), är turismens inverkan på naturavbildningar. I verksserien Extensions skildrar konstnärsduon paradismiljöer på öarna São Tomé och Principe, som till största delen består av regnskog och vita sandstränder. Belägen utanför Västafrika, är demokratiska republiken São Tomé och Principe Afrikas näst minsta stat till ytan. Miljöerna kan tyckas välbekanta, men faktum är att de allra flesta av oss aldrig sett dem annat än återgivna i fotografier. Inför projektet med Extensions identifierade konstnärsduon vilka vyer från de två öarna som var vanligast förekommande på internet, för att söka upp de mest eftertraktade blickfången. De övernaturligt vackra scenerna blir förstärkta av ett suggestivt ljusblänk – en effekt av att kamerablixten okonventionellt riktats tillbaka mot kameralinsen. Som om den hyperromantiska miljön inte hade nog av överdådig skönhet, upphöjs scenen av det magiska skimret. Det blir en antydan om konsumerandet av naturskildringar och cirkulationen av naturbilder som handelsvara.

Soldränkt morgon i bilen på ön Principe. En tillstymmelse av rörelse i en annars slumrande lugn by. Varsamt tvättade hårtester som dansar i vinden, upphängda att torka på en klädlina. Förmiddagsljuset som silas genom hårstråna.

Ett flyktigt minne som etsat sig fast på näthinnan och lett till ett experimenterande av för konstnärsduon nya material. För ovanlighetens skull finns endast en minnesbild från det här tillfället – i den givna stunden kändes det alltför närgånget och utelämnande att dokumentera någon annans löshår. Det finns en tyst överenskommelse om att löshår inte ska uppvisas förrän den pryder ett huvud. Hår är laddat. Intimt. Något som har växt på en kropp. Likt miljöbilder på influencerns instagramkonto, är även håret identitetsbyggande. Friskt och tjockt, perfekt plattat är det ett uttryck för drivkraften att kontrollera sina resurser. Ett ungdomens kapital.

Inka & Niclas närmar sig håret som ett givet material med vilket de kan experimentera med såväl rörelse som transparens. Men visst finns här även en fascination för de lager av konnotationer som löshår frammanar. Löshårets närvaro i många populärkulturella sammanhang. Braids och weaving. Den smått ikoniska perukmästaren Tomihiro Konos lekfulla kreationer. Materialets åtråvärda egenskaper är även dess största problem – arbetet med oförutsägbarhet och rörelse gör arbetsförloppet till ett ständigt laborerande. Eftersom fototryck på människohår är en tämligen obeprövad teknik finns inga tidigare mallar att tillgå. Tidigare testtryck som inte blev som konstnärerna tänkt sig måste avlägsnas. Håret tvättas noggrant ut, hängs att torka, förbereds ömsint igen. I den experimenterande arbetsprocessen återkommer konstnärsduon paradoxalt nog till de traditionella fotografiska tekniker som varit en väg in i deras arbete med det fotografiska mediet.

Det ligger i fotografiets natur att dess motiv är fixerat – ett utsnitt av en händelse. Genom att använda sig av ett så bångstyrigt material som människohår, upplöser konstnärerna fotografiets statiska yta. Den går helt enkelt inte att kontrollera eller styra alltför mycket. Resultatet blir ett konstverk som rör sig i takt med minsta vindpust och kroppars rörelser. Frigjorda från det statiska blir objekten inte längre fotografier, inte heller skulpturer. De står utanför dessa kategoriseringar. Med förnimmelser från regnskog och sandstränder blir de lågmälda och drömliknande totem. Mellan lagren av keratin, emulsionsvätskor och kemikalier vilar den anonyma närvaron av den individ som en gång var bärare av håret, men även av konstnärerna, vars egen uppenbarelse är slående lik de bearbetade testerna.

Digitalt skrot och det cirkulära användandet

Sunset Photography

Vad gör man med ett album som bevarat allt helt urskillningslöst, hela det oöverblickbara förflutna? Fototekniken graviterar mot en extrem, där hela livet ska fixeras, där hela livets omfattning ska gå att mäta upp i dess verkliga längd; man skriver oförtrutet, men ingen läser vad som står.

I boken Minnet av Minnet skriver Maria Stepanova om utmaningen som följer i spåren av digitalfotografiets möjlighet till masslagring. I hårddiskarnas oöverskådliga mängd material görs, till skillnad från det alltmer ovanliga fysiska familjealbumet, sällan något aktivt urval. Återigen står omfånget av fotografi i vägen för ett aktivt seende. Just den här företeelsen har Inka & Niclas arbetat med som utgångspunkt i den skulpturala verkserien Sunset Photography. Projektet uppstod ur viljan att gå tillbaka till det digitala skrot, som återfinns på konstnärernas otaliga hårddiskar. Med årens gång har konstnärsduon av pragmatiska skäl upprättat en omfattande egen bildbank – det är helt enkelt väldigt omständligt att rensa en hårddisk. Mestadelen av de sparade digitala fotografierna har de aldrig tittat på eftersom de ofta vet i ögonblicket som den rätta bilden tas, att det är den som gäller. Under arbetet med Sunset Photography återbesökte de arkiven i hopp om att hitta råmaterial med andra egenskaper än de dem vanligtvis letar efter. Det är inte fråga om ett direkt återbruk, eftersom massan av bilder som finns på hårddiskarna inte använts tidigare, men arbetsprocessen blir ändock återblickande.

Motiven – saturerade landskap och solnedgångar – trycks på textil och täcks med lager av plast. Tyngda av plasten retirerar de för gravitationen – som om fotografiet har gett vika och fallit till marken likt en våt handduk. En påminnelse om bruket och förbruket av sköna naturvyer. Motivet blir förställt, men blicken lyckas ändå någotsånär tyda vad som skymtas mellan lager av våta veck.

Filosofen Jonna Bornemark beskriver konstnärens arbete som en process som involverar känslighet för de sensoriska aspekterna av en situation: hur något ser ut, känns, låter och luktar. Det är inom dessa sinnesupplevelser som den konstnärliga processen äger rum. I en tid där vi lätt glider in i abstraktioner och generaliseringar, och där orden ofta tar över måste vi träna oss på att hålla oss förankrade i sinnesintrycken här och nu. I betraktandet av Inka och Niclas bilder är det slående på hur många olika sätt de arbetat med seendets mekanik: i komponerandet av monumentala naturvyer; i inzoomandet på till synes förbisedda utsnitt av floran vig vägrenen; upplösningen av motiv i mötet mellan fotografi och osedvanliga material; leken med det fördolda i de skulpturala verken.

Alla är de sätt att söka väcka det slumrande, slentrianmässiga seendet åter. Har du tillgång till ditt seende? Kan du se kosmos i myllret vid vägrenen?

BIO

Inka & Niclas

Inka (Finland) and Niclas (Sweden) Lindergård is an awarded artist duo who works primarily with photography-based art. They have worked together since 2007 and live in Stockholm, Sweden.

The materiality of photography is crucial in Inka and Niclas Lindergård’s work which tells of the contemporary perception processes of nature and the connection of the photographic medium with the stylisation of landscape.
Bright utopian landscapes in their works address the spectators’ experience, making them notice not only the beauty but also the culture. An open portal to the hyperrealistic synthesis of beauty, kitsch and visual desire in the language of photography.

They exhibit and are published internationally on a regular basis. Their work are included in the permanent collections at Moderna Museet (Sweden), the Gothenburg Museum of Art (Sweden), Fries Museum (The Netherlands), the Public Art Agency (Sweden) and Arendt & Art (Luxembourg) as well as in private collections in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, France, UK, Switzerland, Slovakia, Portugal, USA, Canada, China, Brazil and Puerto Rico. They were awarded the EMOP Arendt Award 2021 and are represented by Dorothée Nilsson Gallery in Berlin.

BOOKS

Their book ‘The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth’ (2016, Kerber Verlag) revolve around performative photographic acts that can only be experienced through the photograph, an investigation into the of the act of taking a photograph and the camera’s role as a bridge between the physical world and the photographic. It was awarded the Swedish Book Art Award 2016 and nominated to The Swedish Photo Book Price 2018.

The jury’s reasoning:
A book of photographs that burn and glow together with the elements and the earth. The cover stone surface turns into a rainbow whose colours pours over the edges. Readable despite the extremely wide format. Exciting text blocks on the final pages.

Their first book ‘Watching Humans Watching’ (2012,  Kehrer Verlag) won the Swedish Photobook Price 2012 and were nominated for the German Photobook Price in 2013.

The jury’s reasoning:

Inka & Niclas Lindergård bring new life to landscape photography and the way we look at the intersection between humans and nature. With their unconventional and associative style and an imagery, that is simultaneously historic and contemporary, they approach nature as the Big Unknown. The playful book design conveys personal as well as surprising perspectives.

Leo Busch

Tourist

 

Among the world’s fastest-growing industries, tourism is perhaps the most ephemeral. It is today a vast enterprise stretching into virtually all corners of the globe and beyond, requiring costly material infrastructures serving a largely immaterial purpose. Airplane terminals, train stations and bus stops have long ceased to serve transportation alone. Instead, they have been elevated to a higher calling, more noble and grand, as portals of self-actualization ⎯ thresholds after which desire is boundless, and our projections are granted the freedom we have always known them to be worthy of.

The pull of tourism is ignited by a timeless gesture, by the poetry of imagining oneself elsewhere and the hope against hope that this elsewhere will transcend the limits of the body and self. It is a kind of choreography ⎯ to move, and in turn, be moved. But this motion, while a steadfast affirmation of being alive, of existing in the present, is also a condemning to death ⎯ the cost of the world is the world; there is no retaining without relinquishing. Perhaps tourism, so closely linked to desire, is also structured like language. If naming something requires binding it, even killing it in order to establish ourselves as separate, then to truly see the world is to see it become invisible to you, to become helplessly implicated in the disappearance of what is utmost vital. Isn’t the camera, tourism’s principle tool, an all too impotent and tragic invention, preying on our penchant to long for the irrevocably lost? Looking to capture the fleeting, we are robbed of even the benevolent possibility of forgetting what is no longer in front of us.

The tourist goes out into the world seeking the world, and finds the echo of a song sung only to itself. A beach is not a beach, but an example of one. A croissant is not a croissant, it is an example of one. Each a suggestion, a nod to something that feels primordial, but has long ceased to exist, if it ever did. We read them in their constellations as important idioms forming a tapestry of the world as we believe it to have been, a world we can’t help ourselves from seeking, but find static and eternalized in amber. Life is not lived until the signs of the world converge, until it is super-lived during our travels, when our conviction in the infinite is justified and true, and every sunset contains the promise of salvation.

Extensions

 
Sculpting with useless sunsets

Swedish artist duo Inka & Niclas manipulate the visual mechanics of nature photographs and playfully examine the everyday usage of landscape imagery. The artists probe the desire to consume nature through travels and photography, and present oneself as being in harmony with nature. The exhibition Extensions consist of a combination of different bodies of work that revolve around this central theme.

The photographic sculptures Sunset Photography consist of landscapes and sunsets solidified in a state of wetness. Browsing through their photographic catalog Inka and Niclas picked out the panoramas they photographed on impulse, never to be looked at again. The digital waste that fills up our phones, are here used as a raw material. The glass-like, slimy creases of the sculptures hide and obscure. Only parts of the scenery are visible to us, yet it is easy to fill in the blanks, the image has been produced, shared and seen so many times before.

In the mechanics of traveling and photography, a beautiful photo of a beach means that more photos will be taken of that same beach. This is true also in the case of the series Extensions (that lends its name to the exhibition), where the artists, before leaving home, identified the most popular spots at the tropical islands of Saô Tomé and Principe. In the works, the flashgun has left its usual position and turned 180 degrees, now aiming straight towards the photographer and us as viewers. The light striking the lens creates a sparkle as from a diamond. With the addition of extra bling to the hyper-romantic tropical beaches depicted, the artists points at the circulation of nature imagery as a commodity.

Extensions tap into the vibrant, glossy realm of fashion and style. The thin, dry, almost transparent prints on hair, move with the slightest breath. The title is descriptive, yet it plays with the notion of social positioning and building one’s identity by wearing your experiences and exposing the moments as a status marker through one’s body. Not only a hair extension in its most concrete sense but an identity extension that reveals who we want to be.

Family Portraits is a collection of self-portraits taken of the artists and their two children, in idyllic panoramic settings. All dressed up in full reflective body suits that bounce the light of the flash back into the camera lens, the shapes of what we read as a family constellation indicate anonymity. The camera that was supposed to capture them instead erased them. The role of nature as an enduring source of idealization remains untouched.

OLGA KRZESZOWIEC MALMSTEN

Luminous Matter

 

In the exhibition entitled Luminous Matter, the artist duo Inka & Niclas have narrowed down their perspective, both in terms of subject matter and geography. Throughout their work, the artists have investigated our contemporary perception of nature through the photographic medium. Our notion of desirable scenery worldwide has been made possible not only by travels to spellbinding locations but by our consumption of nature via technology. It is through the camera lenses and the digital screens that we experience nature and confirm our existence. In their latest works, Inka & Niclas continue their examination of nature as a cultural construct, but the focus now lies on milieus connected to the artists own childhood and heritage – a partly introspective approach with a micro/macro perspective, coherent with a current universal strive towards understanding and being close to one´s local habitat. The exhibition consists of works from the three individual artwork series Luminous Matter, Family Portraits and Liquify, that the artist duo has worked on simultaneously.

In contrast to their earlier works, often situated in large scale grand scenery outside of Sweden, the series Luminous Matter (that lends its name to the exhibition) centers around depictions of wildflowers and weeds found closer to the artists´ native surroundings. The exploration through the camera has led the duo´s interest in several wildflower species found along the roadside in Sweden – flowers so common in the Swedish scenery, that they almost go unnoticed in our collective consciousness. Or have we just not seen enough wildflowers documented on our screens to interpret them as desirable? The three represented plant species Smörblomma (Buttercup), Hundkäx (Cow Parsley) and Midsommarblomster (Woodland Geranium) blossom and peak during the summer solstice of the Northern hemisphere, a period associated with almost constant light throughout the day and night. As a glitch in our reading of the image, the wildflowers are depicted in a manipulated full nighttime scenario as opposed to the images of the flowers that we are used to seeing.

The title Luminous Matter points far out in cosmos and eternity, contrasting the fragile, short-lived flowers. By throwing retro-reflective powder into the scene and illuminating it with the flashgun, the artists superimpose an explosion of glowing particles resembling popular space imagery or an exploding nebula from the NASA archives. The traces of the powder emphasize and highlight the delicate structures that otherwise go unnoticed and navigate the chaos that makes up ordinary roadside vegetation.

By paying attention to local low-status wildflowers and their natural habitat, the artists have delved into the details of the photograph even further. As pictures contain a considerable amount of information, the post-production of the photograph may here be regarded as an excavation of the image – an immersion in a microcosmos that demands an extensive amount of time spent with the details of the subject matter.

Family Portraits is a collection of self-portraits taken during the artist’s travels to idyllic panoramic settings across the world. The series is a continuous long-term project where the initial romantic scenery has turned into darker settings over time, like a suggestive crime scene in a Scandinavian Noir novel. It is a continuous investigation of how we perceive and save our memory of nature through the mediated picture, but also how we use the mediation of nature for self-identification. ‘I´m one with nature, you can see it on my Instagram account’. In the latest addition to the project, Inka & Niclas, along with their two children, continue their travel to collect self-portraits, this time in the Scandinavian landscape. All dressed up in full-body suits that bounce the light of the flashback into the camera lens, the shapes of what we read as a family constellation indicate anonymity. The four characters pose in front of grand vistas – an overwhelming fjord panorama at dusk, a snow-covered landscape with Polar stratospheric clouds as a backdrop, a meadow at night, among spring onions in full bloom. As with many photographs throughout history, these images serve as evidence that four bodies were present in the scenery. Simultaneously we experience the four individual’s absence in the photographs as their features are erased – like radiant phantoms waiting to transcend to another dimension. The role of nature as an enduring source of idealization remains untouched.

Abstracting the ordinary and enabling tools to the photographic image and its psychological mechanisms have been an important feature throughout Inka & Niclas’ work. In the photographic sculpture-series Liquify, the seemingly collapsed photographs have been placed on the wall, as if wet towels hung to dry. Their glass-like surface suggests materiality more alluring than the mundane shape. It appears gravity has decided their form. A complete understanding of the medium proves to be difficult, as the objects are substantially manipulated into new materia in their own right.

Parts of the romantic scenery are visible, and we can only imagine the beauty of the initial image, while we are deprived of the complete motif. Glimpses of pink blushing snow or raw wildflower bouquets in black and white serve as clues to the depictions partly hidden within the objects. The viewer is thus invited to fill the void with his or her desires and ideas of the perfect shot. And it might as well be for the best because with all our possibilities of manipulating the image, it is hard to get the feeling of content – one can always find a better photo filter or angle. The title Liquify points to the liquid shapes of the photographs, but it is also a reference to the Photoshop filter of the same name, used for heavier types of image manipulation within the beauty industry.

FOTOGRAFISKA

In Bloom

 

For many of us, a notion of desirable scenery worldwide has been made possible not only by travels to spellbinding locations, but also through our consumption of nature via technology. It is through the camera lenses and the digital screens that we experience nature, and confirm our existence.

Inka and Niclas’ work revolves around these sought-after landscape motifs. The manipulations in the photographs are all made in the moment of exposure. Together, they create a visual world that resembles and sometimes camouflages the world we are used to seeing, but which now has its own rules. In the works, the idealization of nature has gone into overdrive and the landscape has become fluorescent.

The series Family Portraits is a collection of self-portraits taken during the artists’, and their two children’s, travels to idyllic panoramic settings across the world. All dressed up in full body suits that bounce the light of the flash back into the camera lens, the shapes of what we read as a family constellation indicate anonymity. As we experience the four individuals’ absence in the photographs, their features erased, the role of Nature as an enduring source of idealization remains untouched.

Photographic sculptures recur throughout the artists’ practice: here, five hand-sculpted objects have been physically dipped into a dissolved, floating version of the technicolored palm tree hanging on the wall. This way, pieces of the photograph have transferred over onto the object’s surfaces, making 3-dimensional, fragmented versions of the very same photograph.

The center installation Sunset Photography is produced for this exhibition. A glowing nebula is hovering over collapsed sunsets. As if pulled by the forcefield of a black hole, the seascapes have risen from being tossed in a pile like wet towels. A complete understanding of the medium proves to be difficult. Only parts of the romantic sceneries are visible, and the viewer is invited to fill the void with their desires and ideas of the perfect shot.

Inka Lindergård (Finland/Sweden) and Niclas Lindergård (Sweden) have worked together since 2007, and live in Stockholm, Sweden.

Jonatan Habib Engqvist

Vatten

 

En chockrosa våg, en solnedgång på speed och en liten självlysande familjesiluett framför en scen som består av en storslagen ocean. Konstnärsduon Inka och Niclas Lindergård utgår ofta från klassiska landskapsbilder men motivet har blivit fluorescerande. Som att de vill påminna oss om att de är fotografier. I detta nummer återfinns bilder av vatten i alla dess former – som hav, is och moln. Bilderna har manipulerats i exponeringsögonblicket, nästan ingen postproduktion används, vilket man kanske skulle tro när man först ser dem.

Men processen är snarare en slags kärleksförklaring till det analoga fotografiet. Detta skapar en värld som påminner om, eller maskerar sig som, en värld vi känner igen men som ändå tycks följa andra regler. Som i serien Family Portraits där konstnärerna och deras två barn figurerar i helkropps dräkter som reflekterar kamerablixten vilket skapar ännu ett lager i motivet. De fyra personernas frånvarande närvaro i dessa ”bilder av bilder” agerar som en spegel av betraktaren och hens egna förhållande till fotografi.

En tredje komponent i deras praktik är fotografiska skulpturer där objekt fysiskt doppas i en upplöst, flytande version av de färgstarka landskapsfotografierna och bildens tvådimensionella yta istället blir en slags skyddande hinna eller hud.

KATINKA GOLDBERG

Inka och Niclas – En övermättad värld

 

Naturen som en glittrande 1980-tals symfoni. Den perfekta solnedgången på speed. En liten självlysande familjesiluett bland storslagna scenerier. Den svenska konstnärsduon Inka och Niclas Lindergård utgår från klassiska landskapsbilder, men vrider upp volymen till max och skapar en ny bildvärld som är inspirerad av den typiska landskapsestetiken, men som har sina helt egna visuella koder. De har jobbat tillsammans i 15 år och deras förföriska bilder klarar att kombinera precision och lekfullhet som få andra. Till våren är de aktuella med en vandringsutställning på Fotografiska och öppnar i höst en ny separatutställning på sitt husgalleri Dorothée Nilsson Gallery i Berlin.

Har denna svenska konstnärsduo hittat det perfekta receptet på hur man kan arbeta som konstnär? Det verkar nästan så. Här blir alla idéer till i dialog och samarbete. Det är tydligt hur samkörda Inka och Niclas är när de berättar om sina bilder och utställningar. De fyller i varandras meningar och förhåller sig till varandra som ett team.

STARTEN PÅ ETT FRUKTBART SAMARBETE
Inka och Niclas möttes första gången på Fotoskolan i Gamleby i Småland i Sverige. Där blev de så småningom ett par och har hållit ihop sedan dess. Efter att de avslutat sin utbildning ville de gärna göra ett projekt tillsammans. De reste iväg till några vänner som hade ett hus på Kilimanjaro berget i Tanzania. Här jobbade Inka och Niclas tillsammans under tre månader och detta blev starten på deras långa samarbete.
Vi åkte dit och testade väldigt mycket olika idéer. Vi gjorde i ordning ett eget residency till oss själva i en kaffeplantage och det som startade där är det som vi fortfarande håller på med. Vi skapade ett gemensamt konstnärskap som vi följde vidare sen. Det var inte planen – att nu ska vi bli en duo, det bara blev att det föll sig naturligt att börja jobba ihop efter det.
Utifrån ser det så idylliskt ut – att både arbeta och leva ihop. Och ofta är deras två barn med på resorna runt om i världen. I den pågående serien Family Portrait ser man hur den lilla siluettfamiljen växer allteftersom tiden går. Och när Inka och Niclas berättar om sin process ute i fält så verkar det verkligen produktivt att arbeta så tätt tillsammans.

LANDKSAPS FOTOGRAFI OCH KONCEPTUELL KONST
Deras bilder har beskrivits som en korsbefruktning mellan landskapsfotografi och konceptuell konst. För Inka och Niclas är det intressant att utforska hur det typiska, nästan klichéartade landskapsfotografiet har en så stor inverkan på hur vi väljer att uppleva natur.
Och på hur vi förväntar oss natur. Det är självuppfyllande att en plats avbildas på ett speciellt sätt och sen så åker man dit och avbildar den på samma sätt en gång till. Och då finns det två bilder av den platsen, och så gör man det en gång till och så tillslut så finns det ett specifikt sätt som Grand Canyon ska se ut på bild. Googlar man Grand Canyon så sitter solen på samma ställe på de första 100 träffarna.

Deras första fotobok Watching humans watching kom ut på det tyska förlaget Kerher och belönades med svenska fotobokpriset i 2012. Den handlar just om hur människor förhåller sig till naturen. De har fotograferat människor som fotograferar natur. En bok som också blev deras stora genombrott. Det finns något både rörande och avslöjande i dessa bilder av människor som så gärna vill markera inför andra och sig själv att de varit på dessa spektakulära platser. En slags I was here snarare än en verklig närvaro inför naturen.

NATUREN SOM STATUSSYMBOL
Jag undrar om det handlar om en kritik över hur vi människor objektifierar naturen. Men för Inka och Niclas är det mer en slags meditation, eller ett utforskande, över vårt förhållningssätt till naturen. På senare tid har det också handlat om att undersöka fenomenet natur som statussymbol snarare än upplevelse.
De senaste åren så har vi funderat mycket på naturfotografiet som en statussymbol, identitetsbyggare och en vara. Man tar sig till en plats för att man vet att den platsen kommer att se bra ut på bild.
Båda är överens om att det skett en smygande förändring i hur människor förhåller sig till naturfotografi under de 15 år som de jobbat med att resa runt till storslagna platser runt om i världen. Och de berättar om deras senaste resa till Grekland, där de skulle fotografera i soluppgången och det redan hängde fem drönare i luften – människor som tänkt samma sak som dom. Och detta illustrerar motsägelsefullheten som ligger i deras projekt. En motsägelsefullhet som de är mycket medvetna om och som också är en del av deras fascination – att både vara en del av ett fenomen och samtidigt stå vid sidan av och betrakta
det.

DEN ANALOGA PROCESSEN
För Inka och Niclas sker allt i exponeringsögonblicket – de gör nästan ingenting i postproduktion. Någon som man kanske skulle tro när man ser på deras bilder. Men processen är snarare en slags kärleksförklaring till det analoga fotografiet. För att få det vackra varma ljuset fotograferar de tillexempel mest i solnedgång eller soluppgång. De arbetar också bland annat med färgat ljus och olika reflekterande material. Det är ofta väldigt stressigt just när vi fotograferar eftersom vi mest jobbar i soluppgång eller solnedgång. Det är en kvart, tjugo minuter som ljuset är bra för vi arbetar ofta med blixt och då handlar det om intensiteten ljuset har i förhållande till vår blixt. Det finns saker som bara kan upplevas i den där korta stunden. Vi står bredvid och kan inte se det med våra egna ögon men det hände i den sekunden och det är för oss en magisk aspekt av fotografiet.
Stora rosa vågor, gyllene stenar och perfekta palmträd – en hel supersaturerad värld somdrar in betraktaren till dessa bilder som flugor mot ljuset. The Belt of Venus and the shadows of Eart är Inka och Niclas andra bok. Den kom ut i 2016, också på tyska Kerber Verlag. The Belt of Venus, Venus bälte, och Earth’s shadow, jordens skugga, kommer från benämningen av det rosa band som uppstår vid soluppgång och solnedgång, orden är konkreta och poetiska på samma gång menar Inka och Niclas.

EN NOGA GENOMTÄNKT LEKFULLHET
Den dubbelheten finns också i deras bilder och förstärks av deras noga genomarbetade sätt att presentera sina fotografier. Här lämnas inget åt slumpen, samtidigt som det finns ett visuellt överskott och en lekfullhet. De förhåller sig till varje utställning som en egen installation i sig själv. De går gärna i dialog med rummet och skräddarsyr varje utställning till de förutsättningar som finns på plats. Utställningsrummet på Fotografiska i Stockholm är tillexempel lite mörkare än ett vanligt utställningsrum – då jobbar de med ett fotografi i en ljusbox i taket som hänger över en nyproducerad skulptur.
För oss är det nästan som att varje presentation är som ett verk i sig. Och vi bryter ofta upp olika serier för att skapa energi i rummet. Då faller kanske tydligheten i den enskilda serien men vi vinner ju presentationen som ett eget verk.

FOTOGRAFI SOM OBJEKT
På senare tid har Inka och Niclas också jobbat med fotografi som skulptur. De doppar olika objekt i ”flytande fotografi” som de själva beskriver det. Och detta både expanderar och förvränger den ursprungliga, nästan perfekta bilden. Dessa små fotografiska skulpturer är med på att göra deras presentation ytterligare dynamisk.
En stor del av vår praktik handlar om att hitta olika sätt för hur man kan presentera det här ganska platta mediet på nya sätt och vad som händer med det då. Är det fortfarande ett fotografi? Eller det blir det till en helt egen materia?
Kanske är denna typ av experimentering med det fotografiska mediet ett resultat av när Inka studerade äldre fotografiska processer? Hon började rätt efter gymnasiet med att jobba med bland annat gummitryck och fotogravyr. Eller så är det möjligen en konsekvens av Niclas tid som industrifotograf på ett stålverk när han var klar med gymnasiet. Oavsett så är det helt klart att dessa två fotografer kompletterar varandra och att de tillsammans skapar ett unikt och mångfasetterat visuellt uttryck.

FOTOGRAFISKA

In Bloom

 

För många av oss har föreställningen om åtråvärda landskap världen över möjliggjorts, inte bara genom resor till fängslande platser utan också genom vårt konsumerande av naturen via tekniken. Det är genom kameralinser och digitala skärmar vi upplever naturen och bekräftar vår existens. Inka och Niclas arbete rör sig kring dessa eftersökta landskapsmotiv.

Manipulationen av fotografierna sker i exponeringsögonblicket. Tillsammans skapar de en visuell värld som påminner om, och ibland kamouflerar sig som den värld vi är vana att se, men som nu har sina egna regler. I verken har idealiseringen av naturen satts i spinn och landskapet blivit fluoriscerande.

Serien Family Portraits är en samling självporträtt, tagna under konstnärerna och deras två barns resor till idylliska panoramamiljöer runt om i världen. Klädda i helkroppsdräkter som kastar tillbaka blixtens ljus in i kameralinsen får formerna av det vi tolkar som en familjekonstellation en grad av anonymitet. Medan vi upplever de fyra personernas frånvaro i fotografierna – eftersom deras drag suddats ut – förblir naturens roll som en oändlig källa till idealisering densamma.

Fotografiska skulpturer är återkommande i konstnärernas praktik, denna gång har fem handskulpterade objekt fysiskt doppats i en upplöst, flytande version av den färgstarka palmen som hänger på väggen. På så sätt har bitar av fotografiet överförts till objektens yta och tredimensionella, fragmentariska versioner av fotografiet skapats.

Mitteninstallationen har skapats för denna utställning. En glödande nebulosa svävar över kollapsade solnedgångar. Som dragna av ett svart håls kraftfält har havslandskapen stigit upp från att ha kastats i en hög som blöta handdukar. Full förståelse för mediet visar sig svårfångat. Endast delar av de romantiska scenerierna är synliga och betraktaren bjuds in att fylla tomrummen med sina önskningar och föreställningar om den perfekta bilden.

Inka Lindergård (Finland/Sverige) och Niclas Lindergård (Sverige) bor i Stockholm och har arbetat tillsammans sedan 2007.

FRANK WOODBRIDGE

Family Portraits at Chapelle D’Aymeries, Cést Extra, 2021

 
I was there. I have travelled. I saw the world. I have been (re)connected to my planet. I exist.
At a time when everyone takes selfies that are supposed to tell you who you are, to show your life in a biased light and to place you on the scale of cool: what does it mean to erase yourself in a photograph? What does it mean to erase yourself from a photograph, to leave only a trace of your passage without any narcissism?

The timelessness of these special kind of self-portraits is what strikes you most when you see the works in the Family Portraits series by Inka & Niclas. Here we are in the presence of a loving and humble attitude towards nature, a connection to the human species in a way that is not individual but rather like the filaments of light that link us together, as Carlos Castaneda describes in his book “Devil’s Grass and the Small Smoke”, when he talks about the Yaqui Indians’ vision of the relationship between living beings.

These sublime photographs give a strong impression of spirituality, universality and at the same time a strong modernity. The process used by the artists and their children, namely to dress in reflective suits that are illuminated by powerful flashes, has the gift of creating a luminous halo effect that erases their features from the photograph. It is striking. All that remains of them is a dazzling aura, a light of life, touching our hearts instantly because we can all recognize ourselves in this illuminated human form: their family. Their family is at the centre of this series: their children are present with them in the image and we see them grow up as they travel, as they are shot, as time passes. And it’s a bit of humanity that we see growing up in these superb settings that are the landscapes they have chosen as their destination.

And this is what resonates when you know the way this couple of photographers work, with their total coolness and clear vision: working while traveling, with their family, visiting non-touristy places, or on the contrary very frequented but shown, captured, differently, a reflection off the beaten track. Wearing reflective clothing, reflecting the light, including their children in the creative process, living in harmony with the place, staying there for a long time, as long as it takes. Discovering the world. And finding meaning in it, making sense of it.

This non-eternal condition of perishable human beings, half-alien/half-luminous egg, is given an almost mystical force by the fact that it is hung in the Aymeries Chapel. The light boxes backlighting the magnificent prints in impressive format add an unstoppable power to the effect. It is a real journey that is both hypnotizing and soothing. We are projected into a magical universe, which gives the impression of a great humanity, a great brotherhood. The human being not as an individual but as a beacon in the night.
Becoming light, becoming water, ice, fire, all at the same time.
Such beauty emanates from these works that it is a real sensory and spiritual experience to be able to appreciate them in this setting that is conducive to silence and a certain form of recollection, of availability.

CLAIRE DI FELICE 

Photographic Sublime in Inka & Niclas’ works

 

Since the 18th century the fascination with nature and the relationship between man and nature has played an important role in art. At the beginning of the 20th century, renowned pictorial artists like Edward Steichen wanted to revolutionise landscape photography by transforming mere documentation photography into painting-like art. Later, photographers like Ansel Adams created landscape photographs trying to preserve and conserve the  wilderness in the image, filled with the aesthetics of the sublime. Since the New Topographics exhibition in the 1970s, landscape photography has sought to show nature altered by man in various ways, between documentation and artistic interpretation.

Following this progression, contemporary artistic duo Inka (1985, Finland) and Niclas (1984, Sweden) Lindergård explore the medium of photography, with their work revolving around the theme of nature and the relationship between nature and human beings. In a way, through their unconventional style and imagery, this artistic duo rethink landscape photography by adding different elements such as light and colour to create an atmosphere  reminiscent of the sublime. The word sublime characterises first of all a type of terrifying natural spectacle: thunderstorms, storms, eruptions, avalanches,  floods, fires, etc. In the 17th century, it became an aesthetic category in its own right, in the same way as the beautiful or the picturesque. The Irish philosopher Edmund Burke published the founding essay in 1757, describing  the sublime as “an artistic effect productive of the strongest emotion the  mind is capable of feeling such as stupefaction and terror”.1 The sublime  according to Burke is based on the feeling of insignificance towards  the vastness of nature, a vastness that can be found in Inka and Niclas’ photographs. It inspires fear but through this fear the observer gains some degree of pleasure from knowing that the object is not an immediate danger to them.

In Inka and Niclas’ work, the addition of glowing lights and formless entities to these landscapes transforms them into something that seems dangerous, uncanny and irresistible. Covering a wide array of subjects and using a variety of techniques, the element that is recurrent in their work is  nature. The addition of glowing silhouettes, colour and external elements play with this aspect of the sublime and gives a supernatural side to their works. In their series Family Portraits, the lighting of human silhouettes evokes an element of fusion between the human beings and nature without making them completely disappear.

In the couple’s works, there is an aspect of the Romantic era that comes back giving a mystical aspect to the photographs.  Pink- and orange-coloured oceans and palm trees, images of flowers with an  astrological dimension, natural elements floating in the landscape, all create  a supernatural scenery reminiscent of the sublime, beautiful yet scary at the same time. There is a certain duality concerning the reality and the artificiality of the elements represented in the image, like in the series 4K Ultra HD, transposing the viewer to a state between fascination and uncertainty, evocative of the uncanniness of the sublime.

In Inka and Niclas’ work, another important element is the presence of the human being, even if not always explicit, thus emphasising the relationship between nature and mankind. In another of their series called Luminous Matter, the human hand appears through the retro reflective powder that was thrown into the scene of Swedish flowers, illuminated by a flashgun. The artists here recreate a scene reminiscent of popular space imagery, common  astrophotography, highlighting the mystical dimension of their work. The coloured powder appears as a magical, surreal element leaving the viewer to question the origins of that powder and the reality of what is seen.

In the series Becoming Wilderness, natural elements such as tree branches, water, and black clouds float in the middle of the picture as if they appeared by magic. This unexplainable aspect again refers to the idea of fear from which the observer gains some degree of pleasure from knowing that the object is not an immediate danger to them.

Similarly, in Vista Point, an unexplained element arises in the centre of the photographs. However, here it is not a natural element but rather an unknown component resembling a  black hole that the couple created through overshadowing the subject of the landscape by inserting a coin on the camera lens. Through this approach to landscape, incorporating a black hole in the centre of the image, the artists bring another dimension to the much-photographed scene, questioning the genre of landscape representation. While on the one hand, the black hole in a way destroys the landscape as an image, creating an absence inviting the viewer to fill the gap with their imagination, on the other, this unknown  component is also suggestive of the sublime, between fear and admiration.

Through their creation the couple rethink landscape and nature, emphasising the value of its preservation at a time when nature is marked by overexploitation. In the 21st century, an epoch called the Anthropocene, these works attempt to recreate a link between mankind and nature, allowing the  viewer to reflect on their impact on our environment. Exploring landscape through different techniques, going beyond the medium of photography and

creating photographic sculptures, the couple through their artworks affect the viewer on different levels be it emotional or intellectual, provoking an environmental awareness amongst the public. While these images subtly address a frighteningly topical subject, they are above all aesthetically beautiful, transposing the viewer into an ulterior world between sublime and beauty, magic and reality.

 

 

EMOP Arendt Award 2021

DOROTHÉE NILSSON GALLERY

4K ULTRA HD

The solo exhibition 4K ULTRA HD of the Swedish artist duo Inka and Niclas deals with our consumption of landscapes through (camera-)lenses and screens. Our image of the landscape is formed by photography and nature is constructed by the stream of images on our screens. The photographic works and installations of the exhibition focus on the “4K ULTRA HD” image search by the same name. 4K HD or 4K ULTRA are terms used in the display industry to illustrate that their screens have a True-to-life picture quality.

Search algorithms list the most popular images in descending order and define which images we like to surround ourselves with, which images we download and save as desktop background on our computers. They are pictures that somehow radiate a kind of security or safety or convince through their beauty. When searching the web for “sunsets”, most images contain the sea, a palm tree or a dolphin in addition to a sun. We know exactly what a northern light looks like without having experienced it.

The sun has fixed its position in the sky, bound to a stick, it remains in its most popular position. The sunset extends over the palm leaf, a sparkling mist from the NASA archive silently floats at the edge of the beach. BLOBS (unformed drops of water) in space or rocks that have been polished over time float in the photographs and camouflage themselves in front of the viewer. The family that cannot be captured in a photograph traveled again, updated their profile and posted again. A reality that can only be experienced through a photo, everything happens in the moment of Exposure.

The artist duo travels together, seeking places to continue their practice of creating a different representation of nature, using the photographic image to capture their landscapes. Integral to their practice is the wish to consider what it is in a sunset over an ocean or the view of a mountain range that is so emotionally spellbinding and continues to fill us with awe? What is it that drives us to go out there and collect these images over and over again. Inka & Niclas’ practice evolves around an exploration of the different components that constitute the powerful psychological effects of different natural phenomena and landscapes.

Ultimately, Inka and Niclas’ work revolves around these sought-after landscape motifs. They regard the almost automated influx of them to our screens as a contemporary ritual and try to approach the complex mechanisms that give a sacred character to panoramas. In the exhibited works the idealization of nature has gone into spin and the landscape has become fluorescent. Remains of an idealized nature aesthetics have abandoned the two-dimensionality of the photograph and reached matter again.

Kristyna Müller

I relation till – en utställning om rum och plats

Inka & Niclas har arbetat som en duo sedan 2007. I sitt arbete återkommer de ofta till landskapet som plats och fenomen. Genom landskapsfotografi och dess konstruktioner undersöker de människans förhållningssätt till naturen. De landskap de utforskar är ofta storslagna ideala motiv som finns på var och vartannat vykort och på varje bildkonsuments näthinna. Det kan röra sig om glittrande solnedgångar, palmer i gryningen, tropiska skogar, vilda berg eller karga landskap. Platser som genom fotografiet har fått koka ner till idén om en typ av plats och på så sätt har blivit en karikatyr av sig själv. Duon intresserar sig för människans fotografiska förhållande till dessa platser och idéer som att med ett snapshot ”ha varit där” eller om hur landskapet visuellt kan nötas ner av den mängd fotografier som tas av det. I utställningsrummet har motiven flyttat ut på olika typer av objekt, för att förtydliga det fotografiska och platta i dessa vyer, men också för att tex lyfta in landskapet i landskapet genom stenarna med fotografier på sig.

Kristyna Müller, CFF – Centrum för fotografi, 2020

ALNIS STAKLE

Inka & Niclas

The materiality of photography is crucial in Inka and Niclas Lindergård’s work The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth, which tells of the contemporary perception processes of nature and the connection of the photographic medium with the stylisation of landscape. Utopian and bright landscapes, as if post-produced with Instagram filters, in their works address the spectators’ experience, making them notice not only the beauty, but also the culture. Their works are made in places stereotypically regarded as beautiful and touristic. There are repeated patterns, which are regarded as aesthetically enjoyable in culture. However, the artist’s gesture is based on staged photography. The photographs are manipulated by arranging the objects in the landscape and using colour flashlights, which literally separate the photographic reality from the physical reality. Thus, their works become an open portal to the hyperrealistic synthesis of beauty, kitsch and visual desire in the language of photography.

Extract from THE NEW CHIC, catalouge from Riga Photomonth 2018.

THERESE KELLNER

The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth

 

A view. A number of hands holding phones in front of faces, obstructing the sight of the mountains. The phones’ built-in cameras can not capture the details of the grand view but filters in instagram can boost its effect and the geotag will transmit the “I Was Here” to the picture story of one’s life shared on social media.
In their practice, Inka and Niclas Lindergård have consistently observed and investigated this process of a contemporary perception of nature and how the photograph is a bearer of stylized landscapes.

The exhibition The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth at Grundemark Nilsson gallery is the duo’s first solo exhibition in Stockholm with photography, video and sculpture from the last few years. The works present investigations of nature as a cultural construction and photography’s role in that construction. The title refers to what may be the most photographed landscape motif – the sunset. The Belt of Venus is the name for the pink glow that appears when the sun sets or rises and the Earth’s shadow can then be seen as a blue color above the horizon.

Inka and Niclas Lindergård travel to places around the world associated with spectacular and wild nature. In particular, they’ve repeatedly returned to America. The country with the superstar views – marked on maps and signs as ‘Vista Points’. During their fourth trip between these panoramas they got the impression that the thousands of exposures taken at these locations somehow wears down the landscape. Signposted photo views could be regarded in the light of the dominant value system of our contemporary world – consumerism.The act of pointing the camera in a certain direction generates more cameras pointing in the same direction. The landscape in the Vista Points series is concealed by a black hollow shape in the center of the images. In actuality a quarter dollar is attached to the camera lens, a coin that can activate the tower viewers found at these locations. The obstacle of consuming the landscape is twofold. The coin never activates the binoculars nor can the memory of the view be saved as an image. The clues in the edges of the photograph are enough to allow the imagination to fill the void. The motif is very familiar – as if it would be pre-programmed on the human retina in the west. The agreement on the photogenic image that we’re looking for in nature began to be constructed long before National Geographic’s creamy color pictures or before Ansel Adams ever visited Yosemite National Park.

Ultimately, their work revolves around these sought-after landscape motifs. They regard the almost automated influx of them to our screens as a contemporary ritual and try to approach the complex mechanisms that gives a sacred character to panoramas. In the exhibited works the idealization of nature has gone into spin and the landscape has become fluorescent. Remains of an idealized nature aesthetics have abandoned the two-dimensionality of the photograph and reached matter again. The belt of Venus has in the exhibition space emigrated to the inside of a cave, a tree burl, stones and a podium. The mystique that may seem encased in northern lights or in the sun’s glow on the horizon is demonstratively staged in the works as to reach a crescendo.

The staging of the photographed scene is also emphasized in the series Family Portraits in which the duo for the first time are in front of the camera. In Family Portraits the duo anew relate to the photographic ritual of traveling, posing, photographing and sharing. Selfies and posing in front of a camera are acts that originate within the core values ​​attributed to the photographic medium; as a witness, memory and token of identity. But by wearing reflective clothing, Inka and Niclas Lindergård hinder the photograph’s testimony and prevent an “I Was Here”. The three characters shines through the picture as eerie, dazzling phantoms or beings of an occult narrative. As if in a broken up partnership, the memory of one party is cropped out of the picture. Nature remains and retains its spellbinding power for herself.

Soon forty years ago, Susan Sontag stated in her famous collection of essays On Photography (1977) that the photograph is a way of certifying experience but at the same time refusing it – by limiting experience to search for the photogenic and converting experience into an image, a souvenir. The spectacular cliffs or sunset are valued primarily after the experience, when the photograph is edited and shared. Well aware of this chronology, the duo carries out a reverse action and the focus of their artistic process is what happens before and during the moment of exposure. Only a few color corrections are being made after the photo session. What is seen in the picture was what the camera registered and could not be seen with the human eye. Again, the duo accentuates the specific functions of a camera and the essence of the photographic image. By performing small actions in consonance with nature during the exposure, such as arranging branches, throwing reflective powder to the wind or illuminating a cave with color flashes the duo detaches the photographic reality from the physical.

THERESE KELLNER

The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth

 

En utsiktsplats. Ett flertal enhandsgrepp om telefoner framför ansikten, mellan ögon och utsikten över bergsmassivet. Telefonernas inbyggda kameror kan inte fånga detaljrikedomen i den storslagna vyn men instagramfiltret kan boosta dess effekt och geotaggen ristar in ett ”I Was Here” i bildberättelsen om ens liv som en delar i sociala medier. Inka och Niclas Lindergård har genomgående i sin praktik observerat och undersökt denna process i en samtida natursyn och hur fotografiet är bärare av en stiliserad bild av naturen.

Utställningen The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth hos Grundemark Nilsson Gallery är duons första soloutställning i Stockholm med fotografi, film och skulptur från de senaste åren. Verken presenterar olika undersökningar av naturen som kulturell konstruktion och fotografiets roll i den konstruktionen. Titeln refererar till det kanske mest fotograferade landskapsmotivet – solnedgången. Venusbältet är benämningen på den rosa glöden som framträder precis när solen gått ner då jordens skugga kan ses som en blå färg precis vid horisonten.

I sitt arbete reser de till platser runtom i världen som associeras med spektakulär och vild natur. Särskilt har de återkommit till Amerika. Landet med vyernas superstars – utmärkta på kartor och skyltar som ”Vista Points”. Under sin fjärde resa mellan dessa utsiktsplatser fick de intrycket att de tusentals exponeringar som tas där i någon form sliter på landskapen. Skyltade fotograferingsplatser kan ses i skenet av det mest dominerande värdesystemet i samtiden – konsumismen. Genom att rikta kameran mot dessa landskap genereras fler kameror riktade åt samma håll. I bildserien Vista Points har landskapet svärtats ner i mitten av bilden – i själva verket en quarter dollar fastklistrad på linsen, ett mynt som aktiverar de panoramakikare som är utplacerade på dessa platser. Det mörka hålet skymmer konsumtionen av landskapet i dubbel bemärkelse. Myntet startar aldrig kikaren och inte heller kan minnet av vyn sparas som bild. Ledtrådarna i kanten på bilden är nog för fantasin att fylla i bildens tomrum. Vi har sett motivet förut, det skulle kunna vara förprogrammerat på den mänskliga näthinnan i Västvärlden. Överenskommelsen om den fotogeniska bilden som vi söker i naturen började konstrueras långt innan National Geographics krämiga färgbilder eller innan Ansel Adams fotograferat i Yosemite National Park, USA.

Landskapsbilderna som fotograferas i oändlighet är centrala för duon. De betraktar den nästan automatiserade tillförseln av dem till våra skärmar som en samtida ritual och försöker närma sig de komplexa mekanismer som ger utsiktsplatsen en sakral karaktär. I utställningens verk har idealiseringen av naturen gått i spinn och landskapsbilden har blivit fluorescerande. Rester av en idealiserad naturestetik har tagit sig utanför fotografiets två-dimensionalitet och nått materia igen. Venusbältet har i utställningsrummet emigrerat till insidan av en grotta, till träd vrilar, stenar och ett podie. Den andäktiga mystik som kan te sig inkapslad i ett norrsken eller solens glöd vid horisonten är i verken tydligt komponerad av duon för att nå ett crescendo.

I serien Family Portraits understryks bildens iscensättning genom att duon för första gången kliver in framför kameran. Även här relaterar duon till den fotografiska ritualen i att resa, posera, fota och visa upp. Selfies och posering inför en kamera ligger i kärnan av de värden som tillskrivits det fotografiska mediet; som vittne, minne och identitetsmarkör. Men genom att bära reflekterande kläder tar de bort fotografiets vittnesmål och förhindrar ett ”I was Here”. De tre gestalterna lyser genom bilden som bländande fantomer eller väsen ur ockulta narrativ. Likt i en tvåsamhet som brutits upp är minnet av en ena parten urklippt ur bilden. Naturen står kvar och behåller sin trollbindande kraft för sig själv.

För snart 40 år sedan konstaterade Susan Sontag i sin kända essäsamling On Photography (1977) att fotografiet är ett sätt att certifiera erfarenhet men att samtidigt förneka det – genom att begränsa erfarenhet till att söka efter det fotogeniska och omvandla erfarenheten till en bild, en souvenir. Solnedgången betraktas och värdesätts främst efter upplevelsen, när fotografiet redigeras och delas. Väl medvetna om denna kronologi tar duon ett grepp i motsatt rörelse och processens tyngdpunkt ligger i vad som händer inför och under exponeringsögonblicket. Endast få färgkorrigeringar sker efter fotograferingen, det som syns på bilden var det kameran registrerade och kan ej ses med blotta ögat. Återigen understryker duon kamerans specifika funktion och essensen i den fotografiska bilden. Genom att utföra små aktioner i förtrogenhet med naturen under exponeringen, som att kasta reflekterande puder för vinden, arrangera grenar eller rikta färgblixtar mot en grottvägg åtskiljer de den fotografiska verkligheten från den fysiska.

STEFAN NILSSON

The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth

 

Erkänn: Du kunde inte låta bli att ta den där selfien när du varpå semester och besökte platsen alla talat om. Bilden hamnade i sociala medier som visade att även du varit där, just där. Du besökte en plats men igenkände en konvention.
För var du verkligen där, eller var du fotografiskt blind för den fysiska platsen? Du är inte ensam. Fotografin har spelat en central roll för att implementera det pittoreska tänkandet i oss alla. Vi upprepar någonting istället för att uppleva.

Inka och Niclas Lindergård hör till de konstnärliga ”bildforskare” som med det fotografiska mediets hjälp med stor intelligens blottlägger våra seendekonventioner i smarta och fantastiska bildserier. Deras sätt att använda kameran slår en bro mellan den fotografiska bilden av världen och den faktiskt fysiska.
Deras fotografiska ögonblick, som verkligen är betonade ögonblick på plats runt om i världen, är iscensättningar som på en gång igenkänner motivets fångenskap i sin konvention som den låter oss se den i ett nytt ljus, i en finurlig utsläckning eller som ett borttagande av oss som betraktare tills det substantiella återstår, som finns där även när vi inte är närvarande.

Numera besöker de flesta av oss naturen istället för att leva i den. Vi lever av den på distans trots att vi som biologiska varelser är framsprungna ur och formade av den.

Det där att betrakta naturen från en kulturellt definierad utsiktsplats blev möjlig i och med upplysningen på 1700-talet. Det var då vi klev ur den tankemässigt – vi var inte längre Guds skapelse i en statisk tillvaro, utan en del av en värld i ständig förändring under de moderna vetenskapernas observation. Världen väntade på att ses och upptäckas.

Med det föddes reselitteraturen och begreppet det pittoreska, alltså att landskapet och naturen kunde upplevas ”bäst och sannast” ur definierade positioner, från vinklar och platser där den gjorde sig bäst.

Så konsumerar de flesta av oss fortfarande ”natur” eller egentligen den idealiserade bilden av den. Tänk semesterbilderna i mobilen från Phuket, Grand Canyon i USA eller Islands vulkaniska landskapsdramaturgi.
Till slut, efter alla upprepningar och fotografiska omtagningar av miljoner människor, är det inte längre natur vi förmedlar utan någon sorts automatisk bekräftelse på vår närvaro på en given plats fördunklad av mytologier och seendepraktiker som lägger sig framför en verklig upplevelse av den.

Det är ett beteende som Inka och Niclas Lindergård klär av sin mytologiska skrud igen och igen i sina konstnärskap. Fotografin kan aldrig förmedla natur – bara en stiliserad bild av våra förväntningar.
Inka och Niclas Lindergård skapar sina ögonblick framför kameran som ett här och nu, där allt det vi trodde oss se osäkras på ett ögonöppnande sätt. Det är bilder av natur som du aldrig sett den tidigare. Nu ställer de ut på Black Door Gallery som första namn på vårprogrammet, samtidigt som Konstfrämjandet Bergslagen i Wadköping visar andra av deras arbeten under samma utställningstitel: ”The Belt of Venus and the shadow of the Earth”.

THERESE KELLNER

Becoming Wilderness

 

Inka Lindergård and Niclas Holmström live and work in Stockholm but together they travel, seeking places to continue their practice of creating a different representation of nature, using the photographic image to capture their landscapes.
Integral to their practice is the wish to consider what it is in a sunset over an ocean or the view of a mountain range that is so emotionally spellbinding and continues to fill us with awe? What is it that drives us to go out there and collect these images over and over again? And what mystical aura’s create the sense of awe and wonder that colours our understanding of nature?

These are some of the defining questions behind Becoming Wilderness. Inka and Niclas’ practice evolves around an exploration of the different components that constitutes the powerful psychological effects of different natural phenomena and landscapes. In their previous project Saga, which was presented in the book Watching Humans Watching, Inka and Niclas started to deconstruct the attractiveness of a sunset. They experimented by extracting its different colours and applying them to new objects and scenes, they explore the possibility of transferring the magical qualities of a sunset to a lesser, more mundane image.  This is further developed in the series The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the earth. The series consists of eight images of rocks in the shoreline dripping with lush colours and with the open horizon as their backdrop. For a moment the sunset left the sky and moved into these rocks. It is not an experience recorded with the eye but the migration of the colors has, through the testimony of the camera, been registered into a new corner of our reality. Every different rock is photographed in a new sunset. Obviously, the endeavor is not to recreate an actual sunset, instead the work lies in the time consuming and persistent process of repeatedly approaching and deconstructing its magical effects.

Colour, flash and nature seem to have travelled through Inka and Niclas’s shutter and in the process a juxtaposition appears as the wild becomes wilder and the unnatural becomes natural. We see a glowing red penguin preparing to conquer the world and a tree stump naturally walking out of the water. By experimenting with reflective materials Inka and Niclas gives parts of the land, stripes of a
cactus, a head of an eagle and a sculpture of a penguin exemption warrant to be reflected through that cameras mirror and end up in our collected registers.

Becoming Wilderness is a body of work that also includes more formal and systematic characters and sees carefully elaborated mark making that almost introduces us to the remains of some secret ritual. It is not only a positive exploration of the human perception but also a homage to the photographic medium. With this in mind Inka and Niclas introduce a spiritual element to their photography, using intuition, chance and an insistently repetitive work process in which they saturate the unexpected and the irrational. Their visual structures and collections of objects highlight a creative responsiveness and attentiveness to their environment.

 

*The title is borrowed from: “Becoming Wilderness – A topological study of Tarangire National Park, Tanzania 1890-2004″. By Camilla Årlin. Doctoral Thesis in Human Geography at Stockholms University, Sweden 2011.

DOMINICA PAIGE

Rituals and Rainbows

BRAD FEUERHELM

Interview for Sony

 

Many of the works you have made seem to have a certain phenomenological approach to landscapes photography. There are bursts of light in different permutations that suggest an affinity towards capturing the ephemeral and passing nature of landscape and atmosphere along with a very specific use of color. Can you elaborate on the synthesis of this arrangement between atmosphere and use of color in the works?

Having a fascination for the spellbinding powers that lies within a sunset we started back in 2009 to photographically deconstruct it. Looking for clues to the power we became fascinated in the spectrum of colors the sunset produces. Later on we started going around applying colors of that spectrum; red-pink-yellow-blue, using a simple on-camera flash; trying to transfer that magic of the sunset to various scenes and objects.
Since then we are often carrying out basically the same idea but now we are also more interested in the act and rituals of taking a photograph. In our series The Belt of Venus and The Shadow of the Earth we are
trying to camouflage rock formations by the shoreline into the sunset behind, using a flash and filters, obviously failing. The fact that the stone really were magically glowing in this sunset-colors for a 1/1000 of a second and we couldn’t even see it happening there at the moment is fascinating. The actual short moment when the shutter is pressed, the flash goes off and the camera with it´s mechanical nature translates and transforms the physical reality into a photographic one, is something that we are fascinated by and have worked a lot with. The photograph becomes not just a product or a proof of the performative act of coloring the rocks but in itself a little piece of magic.
For this project we worked in a very similar way but with the Aurora Boralis.

How does the spectrum of color in the work present a challenge in technically achieving your desired image?

In the case of the two aurora borealis-like photographs, the sky (and the wind) needed to be good, and it is so for at most 20 minutes at dusk and dawn. The sky being good, has to do both with the colors in the sky and also technically, that the light has to be perfect in intensity: dark enough for our flash to out knock out the remaining daylight but light enough for the camera at 1/160s (which is the shortest flash-sync time on the Sony camera) to render the scene as evening and not black night. We hand-hold different kind of filters we have made in front of the flash, moving the filter a centimeter in either direction completely alters the outcome. It means a little wind puff makes a lot of difference. If we do 20 exposures they will all be totally different from each other and the results are nearly impossible to repeat.
We do maybe 50 shots until the sky is ruined by darkness or light of day, if we feel that we got the shot we are done, if we feel we didn’t get what we wanted we stay some 12 hours nearby until the next 20 minutes of perfect sky.

One of the most intriguing parts of working with photography and also one of the things that makes it so uncontrollable and hard, is that if you want a picture of a green bucket and a mountain you have to actually physically find a green bucket and bring that to a mountain, there’s no way around that. The whole outcome then depends on what kind of mountain and what kind of bucket you happen to find.
We always head out with a set of ideas of what we are going to do and what the results are going to be.
Working with photography outside reality is always going to mess with those ideas, it is a constant negotiation between where we want to take the work and what reality decides to do with it, winds blow, clouds comes and goes, mountains or trees obstruct the view etc. Understanding that it is virtually impossible to be in control can be both frustrating and liberating. The photographs are always a result of a collaboration between the two of us, the nature, the elements and the camera.

Does the cold and barren landscape present a condition of comfort or discomfort for you when making these images? Was this location a destination that you had picked as ideal and if so, for what reasons?

We have been drawn to work in these kind of environments for quite some time now, from the beginning it had to do with an interest in humans urges to visit this kind of “untouched” nature, we had theories about the need for reconnection etc. After spending time in places like Iceland we ironically developed our own needs to go there over and over again.

We like to operate between the mystic and natural. It is something about the rawness of these black, jagged mountains and inhospitable nature that attracts us. We often talk about this kind of sceneries being Death Metal, and meaning that in a positive way, there’s no risk of the work getting too cute.

Also our process is usually pretty time-consuming and slow, we are out working for months and if everything goes well we return with a handful pieces. This time we set out to do 10 or 12 photographs in a week which meant there were no failing time or time to go explore unknown territories. We have been to Iceland 3 times before and knew that we would be able to produce there. Island is pretty compact, the scenery and weather changes often, we knew there would be tourists there and so on.

The terrain is often vague and perhaps alien to many people. I am curious as your experience when working in the vast white expanse of this terrain during daylight and the difference it presents at night being potentially more oppressed by the heaven’s above, yet potentially less snowblinded by the conditions of daytime light and the compression of the horizon.

For this project we are revisiting the Watching Humans Watching series that we finished up in mid 2011. That series had a documentary approach and was shot daytime, since then we haven’t really been working in broad daylight. So this felt great for us, all of a sudden we had all this time to work again. When everything is big and white it becomes somewhat a non-place, just a projection space for anything really.

At night the world turns into a huge studio, and the photographs becomes clean and focused. The darkness makes it easier in the sense that it is a constant, and harder in the sense that it becomes much more about scrutinising since there is never going to be more than one or a couple of objects in the frame. Also it can be hard just to walk around and keeping track of where you are, where you parked the car, where the batteries are and things like that. Usually we go around and try to plan everything out in daylight beforehand to rationalise the process.

The use of the solitary figure within the landscape in a several of the photographs reminds one greatly of Caspar David Friedrich and German romanticism. Perhaps even American Romanticism. Is there a correlation for you when you work between the grand traditions of these themes and your photographic practice or is it the complicit use of location that enables this?

Well, in one way of course we lend thematically and certainly visually, that is no coincidence.
However we are not working so much with the romantics directly as we are working with the heritage from (among others) them, the constant stream of landscape photographs and nature imagery that is now everywhere. How that stream have formed our own view on the landscape and expectations on what nature is. Our solitary figures are tourists and we are interested in what it is that drive them there and what happens to them emotionally when facing this grand sceneries. What their relationship are to this landscape that they probably have seen it hundreds of times on a screen, but are visiting it for the first time. We (humans) obviously still have a need to be in the big wild and to experience nature first hand. But we find it interesting that we now also have a need to photograph these scenes ourselves, even if they already have been photographed to exhaustion. In one of the essays in our book Jonas Larsen (Ph.D. Roskilde University) talks about “the ritual of quotation ” which basically means the tourists tracking down and capturing images they have seen, and then at home showing their own version as a kind of a proof that they have been there.

The trajectory of the Northern Landscape (I am assuming these are in Sweden or the Artic) presents a potential anachronism in the sense of using photography as a tool for new frontiers in a world where much of our world’s geography has been mapped ad infinitum. Yet within your works, the landscapes, glacial ice shoves, and desolate rocky outcrops become discreet places without cartographic entity. What I mean to say is that they offer no information as to their specificity. Does this attraction to travel photography attract you generally?

For us traveling is the way we work, as you say we are not explorers on a mission to show new corners of the world. It has to do with us working with landscapes but perhaps even more with the kind of inspiration and chance to work undisturbed that traveling gives us. At home in the city there is all this work and distractions, preparing for shows, sending files, answering emails, eating dinner here and going to someones birthday party there. Getting away from that everyday life and all the responsibilities is crucial for us when getting actual work done.

And within this notion of travel photography and non-specificity of place, does the nominal idea of “sense of place” become a measure of pictorial practice within photography or that of photography and landscape as a referent for transmitting new territories?

Photography has a lot of uses and of course is a great tool to very accurately describe the physical world and we can make more or less accurate conclusions and assumptions from reading a photograph.
However loolking at our work we make a difference between the physical world and the photographic world, the photograph is not a piece of reality but a piece of photography. Once the camera has taken care of the transition into the photographic world, for us the photograph has very little to do with the physical world. That makes the photographs connection to place complicated for us as strong geographical references clouds the reading of the photograph and makes it to be about place, which lies in the physical world. Of course we neither can or would not ever want to not flee from the nature of the medium, but we can at least try to control the reading of the photograph by minimizing geographical referenses as much as it is possible.

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.