It happens every year, in September. Some 400 events all over this 100.000 people town and 50.000 people on their feet. They explore culture in terms of theatre, music, art, food, debates, happenings, what have you – and some come to see my photo gallery.
This year I conduct an experiment with my friend, working partner and master printer Anders Jönsson called “Pigment Bombs For A More Beautiful World”.
Here is a photo of Anders’ daughter Kaja in the sunset printed on a sheet of steel that has been given a yellow coating before printing.
© Anders Jönsson 2011
We print from 1400 to 2330 and visitor may appear from 1600. We do spontaneous – with some preparations – print work and employ a lot of media – canvas, textiles, plexiglass, papers including watercolour paper unprepared for photo pigments, and we do a lot on various metals – new and old pieces, leftovers we have found, whehter scratched or not.
Anders prepares a metal sheet
So we start out with basically empty wals and fill them as the day progresses. The idea is to give visitors a chance to see how things are made and what you can do beyond just shooting a pixture. We see it as an experiment; we always want more time to come together and have fun suggesting things to each other and, so – why not do it on a day when others can benefit too?
Anders plays the computer and the printer like Lang-Lang plays the piano…
So, we had people all the time in the gallery from 16 to 24. They saw how we printed various photos on canvas, linen, metal sheets, paper etc. The response was much more than polite appreciation, it was enthusiastic like “wow, is that really a photograph?” or “I never knew you could get such a beautiful result on a piece of metal” or “this is a whole new way of doing photography”.
Anders and I were very very happy – and pretty exhausted – at midnight. But full of energy and encouragement…
Finally, a small piece on steel – of a sofa and a stool in a white room. It loks somewhat like a lead relief. It is not. It is flat as a pancake and very soothing to the eye.