collaboration

The Albuequerque connection

After Center Santa Fe Review I travelled to Albuequerque to finally meet up with my long time collaboration partner photographer Meggan Gould. More than 10 years ago we met at the Houston FotoFest review, as two likeminded tired photographers sunk deep in a couch outside the review hall, both equally fed up with looking at and showing photographs. But like minds play well so we kept in contact and started a collaborative project some 5 years ago. And now I finally got a chance to meet up again.
Staying with her family on their house up on the hill Meggan managed to take just enough of time off work to make my stay into a work retreat for our project. And we got so much done! It really felt amazing how a chance meeting a decade ago could prove to be such a solid foundation for fruitful discussions and a truly collaborative piece of work. Meggan works in a very philosophical way with the technical buildingblocks of photography to create images or works that somehow showcases the blocks rather than the building. We found eachother at FotoFest through our shared distrust of photographic truth. Both working to tackle this distrust head on we have veered off in separate visual directions but with the same basic understanding of the value of photography. Collaborating on a shared project that doesn´t really belong to any one of us separately has apparently kept our headspace connected.
We had a loose plan of looking through our shared images made during the last 5 years and think about how to make it into an exhibition project. Instead it turned into concrete plans for a book, with agreements on text, editing and design. Leaving Albuequerque we decided to continue the collaborative part of the project, but also make sure we continue working on the plans for a book and see how we can do that as a long distance co-production.
Now I will just hope we can time a Norwegian booklaunch to Meggan´s family vacationweeks!