Om børnene i den lille by "Nokios Elv"
AMAZING SKAGEN
All-around artist, writer, visual artist
Visual arts
What Came First: The Word or the Image?
For me, it feels like a simultaneity and always a both-and.
Words are always rich in imagery for me. Whether it’s an exclamation, a concept, an adjective, or a noun, it is always accompanied by images.
In the same way—completely synchronously with observation—an image verbally narrates itself or triggers word associations the very moment I direct my gaze and awareness toward it.
The situation for "City Persona(e) – also a kind of people", 12-15 photographic studies printed on loosely woven fabric in a 50 x 250 cm format, is atypical.
Here, the starting point was an observation we have all made:
That we often play different roles and present different sides of ourselves depending on the situation and who we are together with.
The basis for this series was thus "people as they present themselves in public space, seen through the eyes of an invisible and passive observer".
But even here, a flood of interpretive and explanatory narratives quickly arises, circling around a series of questions.
Where do the persons come from?
Where are they headed? What mood are they in? What occupies them?
And so on and so on.
It can even be a struggle for me to stay silent and allow the viewer to put their own words to the images, to interpret and associate freely.
As for the 15-20 digital text and herring collages titled "Herring – also a kind of people", there was often an obvious sense of cohesion.
In some cases, the words were a fraction of a second ahead of the image; in others, the image was the firstborn twin.
For "Trees – also a kind of people",
seven photographic tree portraits accompanied by haiku poems and location specifications, it is impossible to say what came first.
The portraits presented themselves as complete in the form they now exist in.
There is no doubt that my frequent walks in nature and my simultaneous reading of Japanese poetry have fertilized each other, resulting in the entirely natural form the tree portraits have taken.
Enough about that!
I only mention the word/image connection
because I am so often asked about it.