Interview 27
Photography News Issue 44 absolutephoto.com
and I don’t mind the glitches that often come with this. Perfection, on the other hand, is overrated if you ask me. In Lightroom I make a few adjustments to the contrast and sometimes make a black & white conversion and crop if necessary. Most is done using the curve tool, where I also make the whitest white into natural white. How did the idea for the Jarred & Displaced project come along? Why did you decide to shoot this project on film and not digital? The idea for Jarred &Displaced came to me at the time I knew I would become a father, which was just over two years ago. I started to feel nostalgic and anxious, thinking back to my own childhood that now felt so far away. In this project I play with the idea of conserving something time has taken away fromme. When I shoot on a digital camera I tend to spray and pray, hoping to get at least one good frame, then view the display every five seconds. I’m afraid to lose patience and to rely too much onmy modern gear. There is something about slowing down when shooting on film. Using a process that’s more of a handcraft and not working with pixels gives
more enlargements. Also, not having a camera display to view shots means I have to use my imagination. The excitement after preparing and shooting for a full day on a single roll of medium-format film and finally seeing how it turned out is quite rewarding. This project was shot on a Mamiya RB 67 Pro SD on with Ilford FP4 Plus ISO 125 film. What is your shooting process? Jarred & Displaced required a lot more planning than any previous projects. I was preparing and going through trial and error for about a year, then I did the shooting for another year. I began by shooting black painted jars on full rolls of film in a light tent that I created myself. The filmhas to bemanually rewound before I can then reuse it to capture a landscape. As the background of the jar is overexposed it’s masked; only the jar has an area that is sensitive for the next exposure. Once I’ve finished shooting I develop the film myself and then scan it to create limited edition prints on 310gsm archival inkjet paper. Do you include specific landscapes or just places you come across? Many of the landscapes are places from my childhood, but recently I interesting
have begun ‘collecting’ landscapes that are important to me today; like Sweden where I found the world’s oldest clonal tree, Old Tjikko, which how happens to be one of my most popular works. I’m hoping to be able to travel abroadandvisit destinations that I dreamed of as a child. What do you aim to achieve with your images? My main hope was to be able to release some of my longings from my own childhood. I was also hoping to find a new way of using an old technique and showing multiple exposures in an unseen way. Are you working on any other projects at the moment? I think about photography all the time, so I keep a notebook in my pocket to write down ideas. I’m also always collecting and preparing jars for this ongoing project, Jarred & Displaced. A few other experimental projects that I’m planning right now do include multiple exposure techniques, but not all of them. If the process is playful and fun enough, it’s more likely to become a strong project. I like to think it’s much up to my inner child.
christofferrelander.com
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