Remains

This project was started during an artist residency in the town of Vadsø in Finnmark region at the north end of Norway. Vadsø is placed along the Varangerfjord in a seemingly wild and untamed landscape of sea, mountain and hard weather. At the same time this area has been inhabited by so many different groups of people for many thousands of years. In historical times there has been strife and conflict between groups of sami, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Russian people until the Germans came to invade and fortify during the second world war. Before this there were stone age settlements, viking invasion and traveling hunters coming in from the Kola peninsula in Russia.
Fascinated by the stories told and the visible remains I wanted to capture the act of looking at the landscape with a historical mindset. The first thing I was told to go see as I arrived in Vadsø was the 100 years old airship tower that is left after the Italian Nobile´s attempt at reaching the North Pole. And my own family prepared me for the trip there by giving me advice to seek out all the places that might contain family history in a town that has been rebuilt but still does not change.

The histories we tell remain in the landscape around us, and remind us of what seems to still be there when we look around. My photographs look at old remains of stone age settlements, family histories and the confusion of what we want to remember of everything in between.
These pictures here from the series “Memorials”, are of standing stones, left in the landscape at different times. One is a prehistoric offering stone that has been standing next to old dwellings and trading posts, a viking times stone that has legends of its own heroic placement as well as a stone said to be from the german fortifications put in place during the Russian troops ousting of the occupation. But now no one knows for sure what their function or use was when they were erected, apart from being reminders of histories we want to tell.

The projects has several series of images, but these 3 are from a series of lumen prints of standing stones.

Handmade original lumenprints on silvergelatin photopaper, developed in reindeer lichen
Unique prints -  100cm x 180cm

2023