enquire magazine interview // november 2011
* Read the original article here (in Italian)
If you have to choose three words to describe your photography, which would you choose?
Nostalgia, wanderlust, overexposure.
What's your first photography related memory?
Can you pick the moment in which or the reason why you start photographing?
When I was young my father would take my brother and I to the bakery to buy scones for breakfast, and we would walk to the graveyard to eat them while he took pictures. Those were lovely mornings, and I still like taking pictures in cemeteries. I did not start with photography myself until much later, when I was maybe 16. Above all the other reasons of why I take pictures, the strongest for me is that I am so afraid of loss - losing people, places, things.
What's your world through the lens?
It can be anything. Through a lens, the world can change and turn into something new. I don't think "reality" exists in photography - taking a picture allows us to alter whatever we see, make it more personal. The world through the lens becomes your own.
You've started a new photodiary full of precious, everyday moment (a coffee, the park, etc) - so, what's photography to you?
A way to keep memories forever, a way of catching thing otherwise you would have gone without noticing?
The pictures in my photo diary are for documentation, mostly. I have been moving so much in the last few years, and that has been so stimulating to me, but it can also be very hard. I am always with a sense of loss and nostalgia, thinking about the impermanence of my experiences, everything has been transitory. Taking pictures makes me feel safer, they give me a way to hold on to what I know I will lose. These are not pieces of art, but simple personal artifacts.
Fjords, Berlin, snow, fog, sun: your's a atmospheric photography.
Tell us something about your travelling and about the fascination with weather.
The weather is so important for me; I am always checking the forecast, never the news. Seeing the weather somewhere makes me feel closer to it, it has an intimate quality. When people I love are far from me, I like to look at the weather where they are so I can better imagine how they feel or what they might be doing, if they are inside or outside, walking in the rain or the sun or the snow.
Where would you like to go next? What's your dream set?
I dream of going to Russia, where my grandfather came from, although he never talked about it - it feels like a place that I could learn so much from. I want to see how it looks in all of the seasons. But there are also so many places here in Sweden that I want to see.
Artists, directors, movies and photographers: where are your roots in art?
It is hard to say - I forget things so easily. I have been influenced more by the places I have lived than by artists, directors, or movies. Landscapes, weather, forests, oceans - they have been the most important in forming how I feel about art and my work.
Name your photographic lovers: who are you currently following?
There are so many. I am the founder and editor of www.inconnu-unknown.com - it is a website focusing mainly on how photography relates to personal geography, and we try to share the work of photographers who are not well known on the internet. So every day I am looking at beautiful pictures by artists from around the world. It is so inspiring to me, and humbling.
If Geneviève were a movie: where, who would direct it, who would act in it?
I would want Dagur Kári to direct it and write the music, and it could be filmed in the woods in Sweden, with Michelle Williams acting. Haha well, that combination would not really accurately portrait my life at all - but I think I would like to watch it!
A song, a book, a film that describes you.
All of the album Clinging to a Scheme by Radio Dept, the novel Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys, and the film Io sono l'amore directed by Luca Guadagnino. I would not say that they describe me really, but they all make me feel deeply, so some part of myself must be there in them.
