What is...?
What is photography? I do not know. However, I will never stop pondering it. There is a picture that will forever haunt me; "Cimétiere de Montmartre 49" by Christer Strömholm. It may appear like a simple picture, supposedly presenting the viewer with the footsteps the dead leave behind (as a visual metaphor). But to me, this picture goes far beyond that interpretation. Strömholm said that the meaning of the image - is the image itself.
So why bother thinking about the meaning of pictures? Clever people like Kurt Bergengren and Susan Sontag have given us some insight, Sontag said that ”through photography, we sooner or later become tourists in our own reality”.
In the Côa Valley, Portugal there are over a thousand decorated rocks produced during a large period, between 30,000 and 12,000 years before our time. It is an outdoor exhibition of art, or let us call it photography. Why did these artists put such an effort into these carvings depicting horses, red deer, oxen and even people? We will never know.
Please forgive me for getting carried away. This text is meant as an introduction to our exhibition called Stop! it’s a thinking spot. The mysterious ”professor” has stated that photography is about feeding our imagination and sharpening our minds. He seems to have forgotten to tell us that pictures are there to touch our hearts.
So, what is this show about? Is it about found objects, "objet trouvé”, or is it just a caprice, a ”farándula" to waste a few minutes of your time on? It could be all of that. But if you observe it, a story or many will emerge about the world surrounding us before it falls into oblivion.
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