Per Bak Jensen (interview) - https://vimeo.com/120675422
Everyone has a view of the world. And our view helps define who we are. Some people decide to create pictures of the world. And the pictures you create, if that’s what you decided to do – are characterized by your view of the world.
So I prefer to define myself primarily as someone – who looks at the world. When I look at the world, then sometimes, but not always – I experience or have a feeling that I can’t see everything out there.
Sometimes I feel there’s more than I can see. There’s something hidden in my surroundings when I’m looking, I can’t put that something into words. I can’t describe it in words. So instead I’ve chosen to photograph it.
When you see some of my photos, I don’t know if you’ll see the hidden things. But what you do see in the places where I’ve felt something was hidden – and that reaches out to me and somehow wants to contact me. It might be something spiritual or something else. At any rate, it’s something I can’t put into words. That’s why I take photographs.
This so called hidden thing that we are talking about … I don’t know what to call it. Perhaps it’s wrong to call it hidden. We could also call it “The other thing”. The hidden or other thing.
We can’t see it. It’s invincible. But it wants to contact us. Somehow it wants to touch us and be with us. I don’t know why. But that’s what it feels like. It feels like it’s reaching out to us.
How can it speak to us. It gives us strange desire. A strange desire to take photographs and a strange desire to look at them. A strange desire to study the forces of nature.
That’s the path of scientists. It gives you a strange desire to find an explanation for everything. That’s the path of theologians. It affects us in some way. That’s why we can say that the hidden thing or other thing affects us.
It moves us. It gives us strange desire. And that desire might or might not be – an expression of the innocent view. The old view from before we lost our innocence.
I just talked to someone who was looking at a picture. And he said he liked it. I’ve always wondered what that meant. Then he said it was because it reminded him of something he’d forgotten.
So perhaps art, theology and scientific theories actually are things – that not only create something new, but remind us of things we’ve forgotten.
That’s when I find myself at a loss of words. I get lost in my own words.
I’ve never gotten further than that. That’s why I take photographs. Because I can’t … I’ll leave that to the philosophers and psychologists – or who the hell else thinks that they know about these things.
So pictures change our language.
Perhaps it’s a matter of everyone, at least I think so … I think that everyone one has lodged within there’s a lot of possibilities – and a lot of information somewhere.
In my opinion, it’s just a question of – how to contact these embedded things. There are many ways of contacting these embedded things, if it’s true. It’s just a theory I came across.
It could be education or knowledge or culture – or whatever you want to call it. I also believe in a form of immediate recognition – if you come across something – that shakes you up – so you somehow get a sense of – or a feeling of who you really are – including what’s embedded in you. I think art can do that.
Obviously, there are different speeds in the world. A rock has it’s own speed but it moves. Perhaps we can’t see it. I once took a photograph of a rock. It was down the coast in Rugen, Germany. It’s a glacial erratic that has moved from Scandinavia. Now it’s five metres from the coast of Germany.
So if you could see the big picture – you’d see this rock dash from Norway, or somewhere, and to Rugen.
I have a speed as well. I tear about. You can’t hear it. I talk too fast and have too many opinions and so on. But if I’m to understood that rock, and comprehend it somehow – and thereby perhaps learn something about myself – I’ll have to find a speed that fits the rock.
The rock would never be able to adjust to my speed – because I dash about. But if you have the time – to sit and watch this rock or to look at the photograph I took of it … not that it’s a particularly great photo. It’s just a photo of a rock. But the photo can be to stop your own time – and attain a speed that allows you to absorb information – that you aren’t able to when you’re dashing about.
There’s a reason why my photographs don’t include people. I have tried to create a scene or space – where you can meet something else. Something you’re familiar with, but which I can’t express in words.
I’d like to photograph people, but I haven’t got that far. I think they’re … I find people problematic. They’re much harder to be around and deal with. I’ve tried to photograph people in different ways. But it didn’t work, so I’m still waiting. I’m still waiting to be able – to include people and take photographs of them.
I’d like to very much, but I’ve found it difficult in every way. So I’ve preferred the solitude of, say, walking in nature. If you walk through landscape, the I think – that the landscape contains a primordial part of us.
So when we walk through it, we can sometimes, but not always – get an opportunity to receive something that a landscape has. The landscape can give us back something that we’ve forgotten – or don’t need, so we feel that it’s offering something we don’t need.
But perhaps we need it some other day. So that solitude, that exchange with the world and that view of the world – when people aren’t present, that’s as far as I got. Of course I hope that it’s not the end of the road.
If you look at pictures and photographs in particular … That’s why I’m interested in and work with photography – and not other forms that are also called art.
Photographs show things as they are. As the world looks when you work with photography, then … The word photography comes from Latin meaning ‘draw with light’.
I can’t describe it. But photography is a way of drawing what is present with light. You only see what you see because there is light. When you look at photographs, no matter what they are – they could be family photos or in a newspaper or magazine – you only see what you see because there’s light.
When I think about it that way, it reminds me – how dependent we are on light. Light isn’t a quality that I appreciate much. But I think about the concept of light and the quality of light – when I look at the photographs, because light illuminates.
That’s why many theologians say things like, “In the beginning was the world.” “In the beginning was the light.” I like that better although it’s not correct.
In my eyes and in my life, light is an overlooked value – that I don’t appreciate, but can be reminded of when I see photographs. I can see that I can see. And that’s because light. And that’s fantastic – although I can’t be on the X Factor just because I’ve realized that.
Nothing is just a picture. Pictures are strange things. Pictures can come from in us. And that can make you want to materialize them – or show them to others. But pictures are strange things – because pictures have their own reality.
There is a vast number of pictures, so one could say – that pictures often arise from something outside ourselves. Pictures sometimes consist of things that come from a different place – than from human experience, or human creativity or imagination. Pictures have their own reality – that arises from the sum of pictures created by humankind.
That I think, is what we should hold on to. We can use pictures as a crutch. We can use art like a form of medicine. We can reach each other with pictures. We can show each other pictures, and I think we need them.
They are often pictures of nature, and basically we are nature ourselves. But the forbidden view has made me feel disconnected from nature.
I know I’m going to die. And last year I was very ill – so I’m very aware of it. But I don’t really believe it. I think I am somehow disconnected from nature. It’s sick to feel that way. Pictures as a form of medicine - can perhaps help us to hold on to the reality which we’re a part of.
Our view of the world doesn’t help us in the end. It will all end at some point in time. And somehow, perhaps in a secret way, pictures can show us that – when we look at them.
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