April 2013
(Roughly translated from the original Italian text by Alberto Biuso)
During childhood one navigates the world freely. No memories yet, and therefor all connections still open to future ramifications. In that forest, one can pretend to be immersed in a joyful placenta, just like the green tangled branches in Kim Boske’s images. In these awe-inducing and intimate photographs, light filtrates from all sides leaving the spectator in enjoyment without even realizing why.
However, too much light may be blinding and from it the motionless power of death can arise. The dead have already been struck down by time and it is us who re-imagine them alive. Until someone equally shakes us up, as to become the breeze in the air… a ray of sunshine… nothingness.
These images reminds us of the colours of childhood. A Mediterranean childhood, an escape within the coolness of these tangles that softens the sunshine. A childhood in the shadows of immense grandmothers, in the black of their mourning. The feeling of being cradled in between those skirts, nearby the fireplace where the always joyously perfect bread was being baked. Delicious. In the end, it is that bread that we crave, that sweetness, that warmth, that distance, that fresh evening after that golden sun has set, and rendered dark all the greenness of the day. It is this that we need to learn, the night putting everything back in place. Every task now completed. Every suffering now surpassed. Every future now known.
It is not a matter of survival of this nor that, of prairies and stars, of meadows and houses. In the green night of Boske’s work, geometry is key, beyond the fractal appearance of the tangled branches. And not many things are as mathematical as nothingness is. Zero is the perfect number, the one that in its absence would make everyone have to stop at the number nine. If continued- as often it is- the zero sticks to all other numbers like a climbing hook to a rock, a virus to a cell, or a lover to its beloved. It’s always from zero that we take off once more.
With this photographer, the severity of details is maniacal and perfect. The colour green is not just one, it is an exploding configuration of hues. Not just glimpses of colour, no. Real colours, each with its own identity among chemicals and phenomenons. Each resembling the different notes of a symphony of colours which is initiated from the undergrowth of the forest, transiting towards the vastness of the universe and then extending, and multiplying, towards the glorious blue and glimpsing clouds.
All of these yielded details are referred to as Care. One can’t live without such care. Without that assembly of gestures, words, silences, deep respect, compassion present even simultaneously with resentment, when really one can’t handle it, this life.
It is not possible to exist without one of its joys, without a smile which removes the sadness of being here, and gives rise to that which is also the magnificent secret within Boske’s work.
One cannot live without knowledge. Life is knowledge. It is the trembling and infinite questioning of meaning that permeates every instance, like fog penetrating winter coats during those wonderful and cold evenings. Freeze water clouds bushes vortex. Tangled. It seems to be engulfed within a glittering cave of wounds and, ready to break through to the depth of our discontent, or ready to open up to the unconfined spaces of light. Enjoying the tenderness of the world, of music, of the spheres. Extending a universal embrace to the entire cosmos, even to men, and all their begging faces in their search for daily meaning, resembling homeless people who seek through garbage and often end up in starving.
No, it does not make sense to aspire for eternity when it could be sufficient to fix our eyes and mind on this joyous and green light. On this growth that accompanies us, when thinking.
Tears are a right belonging to mortals, but their duty is happiness.
That happiness of being that has been passed on to me by my father when we stared at the sun together, during those atrocious and fatigue enducing Sicilian summers. My father always looking for even a little shadow to give me whilst we passed rocks, fruits, and restlessness. His voice reaching me with a steady beat. Tranquil and settled.
Then life turns into swirls. It becomes the crystallized greenish blue where songs set sail, voices and hymns elevated to the most round and profound pleasure. A man can then vibrate like a tree during a summer breeze, happy to have been invaded by the bright light of the sun, and of which the light has strengthened the sap and returned its life. A complex spherical form. Perfect in all of its parts. This is the intrinsic green of Kim Boske.
Figaro Japon
June 2014
In the very early stages of your career (meaning your childhood,) when did you start taking photographs, and what did you shoot?
I started taking pictures when I was around 8 years old. I got a pink Kodak camera for my birthday. I mostly took pictures during our family holidays.
Who is your favorite photographer of all time and why?
I don’t really have a favorite photographer. My work is basically an investigation of time and space. That is a very broad subject. Therefore, there are many things which inspire me. I read the work of philosophers, such as Gilles Deleuze and Bergson. But I am also inspired by someone like Andrew Wiles, the mathematician who solved the thesis of Fermat. These people help to adjust and sharpen my perspective on the world. They keep my process going and make me notice and be inspired by different things every time, especially within nature.
When you take pictures, what do you give most attention to?
I start from a certain vision, but I always allow room for surprise, intuition and development in my process. If I knew in advance what I was going to create the reason for making it would be gone, because it would already exist in my head.
In your representative work “MAPPING, your conceptual attitude towards nature is seen. Seeing in other series, you are particularly interested in trees to represent your idea. Can you explain the reason you choose this as your subject?
To me reality is an unlimited field of differentials, which move disorderly alongside each other and together form the unity of being. What fascinates me is a reality and a way of thinking that presents itself more as “becoming” rather than “being”. “Nature” has acquired a dominant position in my photographs as nature has a special relationship with chaos and order. Patterns in nature are never totally alike and they seem to never reappear in exactly the same way. Nature is overwhelming. There is a treasure of information, structures and processes hidden in nature. Nature is intertwined with everything else. In the series “Mapping” what I investigate is about how the physical movement through time and space changes our perspective on the world continuously. By letting go of the individual perspective and bringing together multiple perspectives in one image, a new layered reality comes into existence.
You have been to Japan to make the work “Yakushima,” and now you are going to do the shooting in Japan again. What about Japan attracts you?
The forest of Yakushima inspired the forest setting in Hayao Miyazaki’s film “ Princess Mononoke” and I am a big fan of his work. There are like a million things in Japan that inspire me, for example I am fascinated by the way Shintoistic Japan regards nature. Nature and culture aren’t forcibly separated here as they are in other parts of the world. At the same time, nature is modeled as if it were a piece of art itself. Many gardens have been carefully constructed from the observer’s perspective. In Japan, the ultimate experience of nature is nature perfectly constructed in all its facets.
Do you think you are also influenced by Dutch history of painting and the contemporary history of photography in Dutch?
Not necessarily, although the art of painting did play a significant role in Stories. The construction of the flower bouquets in this series has a strong resemblance to the old flower still lives, where the old painters would sketch flowers during the different periods of their bloom and eventually bring these phases together in the final painting.
Please tell us about your latest project.
My new work “Untitled FW- BN” consists of a large scale photograph 300x 100 cm in combination with a video work. Both works possess fragments of each other. The photographic work is made up of different fragments of a garden, which I recorded from multiple points of view by walking through the garden. These different shapes I bring together in a new image that reveals the garden in its full capacity. All perspectives on the garden exist at the same time, they overlap each other, they share space with one another and are now brought together in one image. It is a movement of appearing and disappearing. The video landscape is made up of moving nature images in combination with photographic images from the garden that also exist in the photographic work. It is a seemingly still image that is continuously changing. No visitor will register the work exactly the same way. Because of the construction of the work, where you can see all different shapes and shades of the garden it’s kind of like a slower “Time” becomes visible. The various clips carry each other and "persist". The installation shows a complex, layered and non-hierarchical narrative. It is determined by a circulation of situations in which I've searched for a harmonious image in which you can discover disharmony, but that does not affect the unity of the image.
I go walking in your landscape catalogue
Solo show at Park Ryu Sook Gallery
April - May 2014
Park Ryu Sook Gallery present a Dutch artist Kim Boske’s first solo exhibition in Korea. Using photography as medium, Boske creates a ‘new reality’ by bringing together multiple perspectives into one image.
The exhibition features a selected body of work encompassing her most notable series to date, including Mapping and I go walking in your landscape, as well as her latest series Untitled (Flowers) in a large scale photograph and a video.
At first glance, one might relate Boske’s work to a scenery from an Impressionist landscape. Its painterly touches and luminous plane take the viewer to a perfectly serene garden, as if completely disconnected from the world. Taking a second look, discovering the work to be photography, one wonders how she came to achieve such dreamlike effect. Is it by a long exposure? Electronically manipulated? Upon closer investigation, it is revealed that the images are made of multiple layers of photos. As one follows along one layer, it meets another, and so on different layers continue to merge and intertwine forming one harmonious image in its entirety.
Fascinated by how different moments in time and space determine our perspective and define reality, Boske focuses on the system of ‘Time’ in her research. She regards it as “a structure that is made up of smaller, differentiated structures, in which [she sees] the ‘now’ as an intricate assembly of several related influences of past and present.”
Boske composes her work by capturing and assembling different visual fragments lost during passing of time. The result is the collection of afterimages taken from past and present, together constructing an image of ‘now’, revealing a phenomenon that is impossible to see or witness with the naked eye.
In the series Mapping, Boske photographs trees from multiple angles surrounding each tree by walking around them. Here she investigates how the physical movement through time and space changes our perspective on the world. When all the images are combined, the essence of tree is condensed in one image and forms a new life by transcending physical time and space.
In I go walking in your landscape and Untitled, Boske walks around the park and navigate through the system of time to study the way we look at nature. She is fascinated by nature’s endless possibilities in its ever moving and changing environment. Again, Boske captures multi-dimensional perspectives and portray them in a two-dimensional form where chaos and order of nature mingle through complex layers, yet all presented in harmony.
Kim Boske was born in 1978 in Hilversum in the Netherlands and studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Her work has shown at leading international museums including Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland), MAAM Moscow, and Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam. Her work is included in the collections of the Nederlands Fotomuseum, AMC Collection, and the Netherlands Embassy in Washington, D.C. She lives and works in Amsterdam.
Landscape stories interview by Camilla boemio
February 2012
PHOTO+ Magazine
October 2012
Can you tell us about your approach to photography & main theme?
My investigation concerns itself, both in its content and visually, with the network of the Time system. This Time system intrigues me in all its possible shapes and forms. To me reality is an unlimited field of differentials, which move disorderly alongside each other and together form the unity of being. What fascinates me is a reality and a way of thinking that presents itself more as “becoming” rather than “being”. Stories forms the beginning of this ongoing investigation. It was my thesis project in 2005, an investigation of the merging of different moments of the day in a photographic image, where photography seems to derive its rationale from its being bound up with time and is usually considered the ultimate proof of this one single moment. I let go of the “now” and allow my ideas to form meaning through different layers. In Stories I do this by showing the charged quality of a place by connecting the characters of different objects in that place. This creates a new time frame, which can be recognized by its aberrance, or perfection. I rearrange the passing of time and light which gives space a different, tangible meaning. I am concerned with the interplay between the passing and dissolving of time.
Can you tell our readers about your Series I go walking in your landscape?
In “I go walking in your landscape”, I investigates how physical movement in time and space continually changes our perspective on the world. By letting go of the individual perspective and bringing together multiple perspectives in one image, a new layered reality comes into existence. This project took place in the differen’t city gardens of Amsterdam. In this project I was very inspired by the following words: “A consciousness that could not imagine, would be hopelessly mired in the “real,” incapable of the perception of unrealized possibilities, and thus any real freedom of thought or choice. In order to imagine, a consciousness must be able to posit an object as irreal—nonexistent, absent, somewhere else and it does so always from a particular point of view. All of our engagements with the world have the potential to activate the imaginary process. And because the imaginary process relies on intentionality, the world is constituted not from the outside into our consciousness, but rather we constitute the world based on our intentions toward it.” (Sartre)
Trees & Flowers your Objects in all projects are related with nature. Any reason you are interested in nature?
Nature has a special relationship with chaos and order. In nature, patterns are never completely regular and they never seem to repeat themselves in the exact same fashion. Nature is overwhelming. It possesses a bizarre quantity of information, structures and processes. It is interwoven with everything. Different aspects fascinate me every time. In I go walking in your landscape I walk around in a park. Walking means taking paths. Without this movement along paths the park cannot be comprehended.
Your works are abstract compositions and it looks like a watercolored painting in Mapping, Kanazawa, I go walking in your landscape. Could you tell us about the process of your works?
I build images that consist of transitions, shifts and changes. This way I try to make the complex possibilities of the “now” tangible. The result may be a field of differentials, but as a field it forms an unequivocal unity. It takes a precise and arduous process of balancing to achieve this.
What is most important point choosing a place, trees and Forest?
For example the starting point for my “Kanazawa” series is my fascination for the way shintoistic Japan regards nature. Nature and culture aren’t forcibly separated here as they are in other parts of the world. At the same time, nature is modeled by the Japanese as if it were a piece of art itself. Many gardens have been carefully constructed from the observer’s perspective. In Japan, the ultimate experience of nature is nature perfectly constructed in all its facets. I made my quintych “Kanazawa” here. The five pieces of this quintych all originated from the same material, taken on a walk through kenroku-en (one of the three most famous gardens of Japan). The different perspectives on the garden share a space with each other and are brought together in one image.
There are so many great artist in your country. Who is your favorite artist, Where do you get inspiration from?
My work is basically an investigation of time and space. That is a very broad subject. Therefore, there are many things which inspire me. I read the work of philosophers, such as Deleuze and Maurice Merleau Ponty. But I am also inspired by someone like Andrew Wiles, the mathematician who solved the thesis of Fermat. These people continue to sharpen and adjust my perspective on the world. They keep my process going and make me notice and be inspired by different things every time, especially in nature.
What's next for you?
This month my first book “Mapping is coming up. It will be presented at the new photography fair Unseen in Amsterdam. After this i will be working on my new project in which i build images from my archive of Japan which i created over the last years, this new project will be in black an white. At the same time I’m working on some new video works.
Landscape stories 5 Animals May 2011
Decay can be very slow
Kim Boske interviewed by Marc Valli in Elephant Magazine # 8
Autumn 2011
When did you first arrive in Amsterdam and what were your first experiences of the city?
I moved to Amsterdam when I was seventeen to study here. I felt right at home and I’ve enjoyed the city’s dynamic and energy ever since.
What makes Amsterdam such a good city for a creative person to live in?
That’s hard for me to say. By now I have lived in this city for so long it’s hard for me to look at it objectively. The city’s diversity is wonderful, but then that’s such a cliché. To me Amsterdam is a place where I can concentrate and where I find myself surrounded by culture. However, this comfortable feeling also makes me want to leave the city from time to time, just to step into a different world now and again and gain new inspiration for my work. Afterwards I always return to my hometown to process my new material.
Are there any frustrations sometimes linked with being in Amsterdam?
There isn’t much room left to develop new ground, to be impulsive. At times it feels like the artistic freedom of movement is somewhat restricted because of this.
How would you define Amsterdam's art and photography scene?
There’s a relatively varied infrastructure. There are a few good art schools, a few good galleries, a few good museums. There’s always something going on, but the scene isn’t very big.
Would you say that there is a strong connection between certain Dutch masters and your work?
Not necessarily, although the art of painting did play a significant role in Stories. The construction of the flower bouquets in this series has a strong resemblance to the old flower still lives, where the old painters would sketch flowers during the different periods of their bloom and eventually bring these phases together in the final painting.
By the way, I do understand why for instance “I go walking in your landscape” would be associated with Impressionism. I can see how this series evokes the short, thick strokes of Impressionist paintings. I can also see some resemblance to Impressionism in the importance of the passing of time in the work and in the fact that the Impressionists did not paint a scene as others saw it, but rather as they saw and experienced it.
Whereas in my series “I go walking in your landscape I am much more concerned with how the physical movement through time and space changes our perspective on the world. And how, through letting go of the individual perspective and bringing together multiple perspectives in one image, a new, layered reality comes into existence.
You called one of your series, ‘decay can be very slow’. Were you trying to explore the relationship between living creatures (nature, us) and death – or am I getting this wrong?
Well, actually it’s more about the way we experience and regard nature. It has become difficult to extinguish between the artificial and the genuine in our experience with nature. The world as we know it consists mainly of simulacra, of whose relationship to reality we are unsure. Reality has merged with its mimicry in a game of different levels and intensities.
In this series I portray stuffed animals. I went to several natural history museums across Europe in search of stuffed animals “relocated” in their natural habitat. The dioramas in which they are portrayed are like small, isolated worlds in which time seems to have solidified. It is as if their existence is placed out of time. It is a piece of self-created history, a time frame constructed in retrospect.
In Mapping, you seem to have tracked down the movement of trees. But the result is both dynamic and painterly (a kind of contradiction of sorts). What technique were you using? How did that series come about?
For this series I photographed trees, which I portrayed from different angles by walking around them. Next I made these images blend in the computer. A very laborious process and a lot of choosing and composing eventually resulted in an image from which time and movement have been squeezed out.
Kanazawa, Yakushima... You seem to have a close affinity to Japan and, it appears to me, to be quite influenced by Japanese aesthetics. Would you say that is true? Did you visit Japan?
Yes I did on a few occasions. And I am fascinated by the way shintoistic Japan regards nature. Nature and culture aren’t forcibly separated here as they are in other parts of the world. At the same time, nature is modeled by the Japanese as if it were a piece of art itself. Many gardens have been carefully constructed from the observer’s perspective. In Japan, the ultimate experience of nature is nature perfectly constructed in all its facets.
I made my quintych “Kanazawa” here. The five pieces of this quintych all originated from the same material, taken on a walk through kenroku-en (one of the three most famous gardens of Japan). The different perspectives on the garden share a space with each other and are brought together in one image.
One of your series is called ‘stories’. What stories were you trying to tell in that series?
My investigation concerns itself, both in its content and visually, with the network of the Time system. This Time system intrigues me in all its possible shapes and forms. To me reality is an unlimited field of differentials, which move disorderly alongside each other and together form the unity of being. What fascinates me is a reality and a way of thinking that presents itself more as “becoming” rather than “being”.
Stories forms the beginning of this ongoing investigation. It was my thesis project in 2005, an investigation of the merging of different moments of the day in a photographic image, where photography seems to derive its rationale from its being bound up with time and is usually considered the ultimate proof of this one single moment.
I let go of the “now” and allow my ideas to form meaning through different layers. In Stories I do this by showing the charged quality of a place by connecting the characters of different objects in that place. This creates a new time frame, which can be recognized by its aberrance, or perfection. I rearrange the passing of time and light which gives space a different, tangible meaning. In both examples I am concerned with the interplay between the passing and dissolving of time.
Finally, this seemed like an inevitable subject while I was in Amsterdam: What do you think of the Dutch system of subventions for the arts? And the attitude of the current government towards the arts?
Cutbacks are not necessarily a bad thing. But these cutbacks are so enormous, so drastic, so reckless. It exudes such contempt for the arts.
AMC Magazine door Tineke Reijnders
2010
Een unieke prestatie komt nooit als een dief in de nacht. Prestaties gedijen in een optimale omgeving. Tot bloei komt een plant die in de juiste grond wortelt en opgroeit in een geschikt klimaat. Het geldt voor de natuur, maar ook voor sport, wetenschap en kunst. Kunstwerken uit perioden waarin alles klopte, waarbij alles elkaar positief beïnvloedde - talent, economie, het niveau van beschaving en de gunstige wil van de macht - blijven drukbezochte hoogtepunten. Denk aan de Gothische kerken, de schilderijen van de Renaissance, de zeventiende Hollandse meesters, de groten van het modernisme. Het mag wat overmoedig klinken, maar zeggen dat we ook nu en hier getuige kunnen zijn van zo’n gelukkig hoogtepunt is niet helemaal overdreven. Niet dat dit geldt voor alle terreinen en uitingen van de kunst, maar binnen recente ontwikkelingen van de video en fotografie wordt in verschillende richtingen verbluffend pionierswerk verricht. Sinds een jaar of vijftien, twintig heeft een hele generatie van voornamelijk jonge Nederlandse vrouwen een eigen signatuur geplaatst. Musea voor fotografie als Foam en Huis Marseille onderstrepen met regelmaat de internationale uitstraling van hun werk. Binnen de daarmee gecreëerde context van vertrouwensvolle verwachting ontmoette het werk van Kim Boske dan ook een natuurlijke bedding. Sinds ze vijf jaar geleden haar studie aan de Koninklijke Academie in Den Haag afsloot en dat direct al succesvol, heeft ze een aantal boeiende fotoseries tot stand gebracht, zoals te zien is op haar website. Het is niet de eerste keer dat het AMC een opvallend talent al vroeg in de carrière voor de collectie weet te interesseren. De aankoop voor de AMCcollectie betreft de bomenreeks “Mapping”. Daaruit zijn maar liefst 11 werken verworven voor de nieuwbouw van het Q-gebouw, de gloednieuwe behuizing van de polikliniek. Het geeft blijk van een scherpzinnige visie op de hedendaagse kunst dat er per etage een solotentoonstelling staat gepland.
De kortgeleden in gebruik genomen poli Interne Geneeskunde is een wonder van natuurlijk licht, blonde materialen en ruimtelijke beleving. De groene tonen van de foto’s vormen er toepasselijke aandachtspunten, bescheiden in eerste aanzicht en indringend qua kijkgenoegen. Het meeste werk is te zien in de centrale wacht- en balieruimte, maar ook op de behandelkamers hangen excellente foto’s. Het onderwerp is de boom. Soms staat die solitair in het landschap, soms zie je een deel. Een afgetekend, precies omlijnd of scherp weergegeven object is de boom echter niet. Dat aspect van fotografie, de loepzuivere weergave, is hier allerminst het doel. De foto vertelt geen particulier, maar juist een universeel verhaal, het gaat niet over die ene boom, maar over een boom, de boom uit onze herinnering of de boom die onze dagdroom stoffeert. Hier en daar zie je nabeelden en schaduwen. De boom lijkt geschetst met ontelbare halen en streken van een dun penseel. Kim Boske bereikt dat effect door talloze opnamen met elkaar te laten versmelten in de computer. Het is een bewerkelijk procédé. Eerst wandelt ze om de boom heen en fotografeert hem van alle kanten en vanuit verschillende standpunten. Al deze beelden legt ze in de computer over elkaar heen, een kwestie van kiezen en componeren. De foto is dus een samenvattend totaalbeeld, een verlijming waaruit tijd en verplaatsing zijn weggeperst.
Zo onttrekt Kim Boske haar werk aan dat beroemde éne beslissende fotografische moment. Tijd is hier een abstract gegeven. Ook wanneer een foto over een jaargetijde gaat, neem je Boske’s boom waar als een boven het tijdsverloop verheven vorm van zijn.
Landschapsschilders haalden vroeger van alles uit de kast om aan een vergezicht diepte te verlenen. Een boom op de voorgrond maakte het perspectief nog dieper. Jacob van Ruisdael schiep wijdse panorama’s, zijn schilderijen werden het voorbeeld voor latere landschapsschilders en ook voor sommige fotografen.
Kim Boske doet dat anders. Zij heeft de diepte als iets terloops opgevat. Ze maakt er geen op zichzelf staand doel van en verdicht de diepte tot een los, diffuus weefsel, vergelijkbaar met vallende sneeuw. Achter- en voorgrond raken als het ware elkaar. Voor de diepte is een geraffineerd soort ruimtelijkheid in de plaats gekomen. De structuur van de boom lijkt door de talloze over elkaar heen gelegde opnamen te ontploffen in een exuberante, pluriforme golf van bladeren en takken. De lucht warrelt, trilt en zucht tussen de blaadjes door. Alles ademt. Hier en daar piept de blauwe lucht door het groen. Het is wonderlijk hoe de stille boom zo’n overstelpende staat van beweeglijkheid kan vertonen. Het oog verveelt zich geen moment als het langs de takken glijdt en door het gebladerte zigzagt. De veelvouden van richtingen verwarren en bedwelmen. Ze streeft, zegt Kim Boske, naar ‘harmonie waarin je disharmonie kunt ontdekken’. Opdat de kijker de subtiliteit gewaar wordt. Wat geen probleem kan zijn, binnen het rustige beeld van een boom, sprankelt de subtiliteit in honderden nuances van groen. Alsof het geschilderd is. Het is echter puur wat een fotograaf uit de werkelijkheid haalt. Een fotograaf met talent dan.
Kim Boske interviewed by Marc Feustel in Foam Magazine # 24 Talent
Fall 2010
What are your influences, photographic or otherwise?
My work is basically an investigation of time and space. That is a very broad subject. Therefore, there are many things which inspire me. I read the work of philosophers, such as Gilles Deleuze and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. But I am also inspired by someone like Andrew Wiles, the mathematician who solved the thesis of Fermat. These people help to adjust and sharpen my perspective on the world. They keep my process going and make me notice and be inspired by different things every time, especially within nature.
It is interesting that the influences you mentioned are in the fields of philosophy and mathematics rather than visual arts. How does this manifest itself in your artistic process? Do you often start a series of work from an idea or a concept or do you tend to start shooting and then develop ideas from your images?
It works both ways. I start from a certain vision, but I always allow room for surprise, intuition and development in my process. If I knew in advance what I was going to create the reason for making it would be gone, because it would already exist in my head.
Your work often deals with our representation of nature, for example in still lives or in natural history museums, rather than nature itself. Is the human representation of nature a subject of particular importance in your work?
To me it's more about the way we look at nature. The way we experience nature is influenced by the artificial. It is virtually impossible to have an authentic experience with nature. Nature as we see it around us is already a part of our romantic view of the past. The world around us consists for a large part of simulacra, for which it can be hard to make out their relationship to the original.
The series Mapping and I go walking in your landscape seem to represent a significant departure from your other work where the composition and lighting are very precise and controlled. How did you come up with and develop the approach that you are using in these series?
The final result may look different, but the process is just as intensive and precise. My investigation, both in terms of content as well as visually, is concerned with the network of the system of Time. This system in all its possible shapes and forms intrigues me: it is rich and layered with meaning even in its conventional form. I see the Time system, the great constant of our world, as a structure that is made up of smaller, differentiated structures. The "now" I experience is a complex, differentiated collection of all sorts of connected influences from the past and the present. A web of similarities and minute differences caused by the slightest change of time. Within this web through observation you can create time and space in your mind's eye.
The realization that we find ourselves in this web is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for me. I portray different layers of time by carefully assembling visual fragments of narrative elements to create a structure of connections and unity, which I translate into an image. I view my work as constructions in which layers upon layers of ideas take on a meaning of their own. That makes the complex possibilities of the "now" tangible. I am searching for harmonious images (or constructions of images) in which you can find disharmony, without having that detract from the unity of story and image. I am concerned with the subtlety of the image in which I offer the viewer time to discover new elements within each layer.
As well as my source of inspiration, the Time system is also my apparatus to show this rich, layered world. This manifests itself in my work in many ways. For instance, in carefully constructed, temporary fragments in which I use narrative elements. I rearrange the passing of time and light, which gives space a different, tangible meaning. This creates a new time situation which can be recognized by the aberration or the perfection of it, such as in the series Stories, Mapping and I go walking in your landscape. Or by going in search of real situations which have an historically layered quality in themselves, as in the series Decay can be very slow. In both examples I am concerned with the interplay between the passing and dissolving of time.
The reason I create the things I do is that I am not satisfied with the world as it presents itself to me at first sight. Through my work I seek to incite the imagination.
Looking at these two recent series (Mapping and I go walking in your landscape), there is an impressionistic quality to the images. However, it seems that your approach is quite far away from that of the Impressionists. How much was painting, impressionism or otherwise, an influence in these series?
It did not play a significant role in the starting point of these two series. But I do understand why my last two series would be associated with Impressionism. I can see how these series evoke the short, thick strokes of Impressionist paintings. I can also see some resemblance to Impressionism in the importance of the passing of time in the work and in the fact that the Impressionists did not paint a scene as others saw it, but rather as they saw and experienced it. But, for instance, in the series Mapping what I investigate is much more about how the physical movement through time and space changes our perspective on the world continuously. By letting go of the individual perspective and bringing together multiple perspectives in one image, a new layered reality comes into existence.
The technique that you have used in I go walking in your landscape leads to images with extremely rich textures. In some images, texture appears to be everything. I'm curious as to how you intend to present these images in the form of prints. Is the printing process important to you, or do you focus more on the making of the image rather than the physical object that is the print?
The printing process is crucial for my work. I spend a lot of time on it and a lot of attention. It really adds something to the experience of my work to see the real thing. The right printing and way of exhibiting the work are important to do justice to the story of the image.