A camera gave a shy boy the courage to meet the world.
He has been meeting it ever since.
I am an artist who uses photography as my most important language. The camera has never been the destination. It became my way of understanding the world. It has always been the invitation.
An invitation to meet people.
To listen.
To pay attention.
To stay with a question a little longer.
For more than three decades, my work has taken me to places I could never have imagined. I have listened to survivors of war, terrorism and loss. I have met artists, writers and people whose names will never appear in history books. I have sought nature whenever the world became too noisy.
Looking back, I realise these are not separate bodies of work. They are chapters in the same lifelong investigation.
How do people continue after experiences that change them?
How does memory shape us?
What remains after time has passed?
Where does hope begin?
I don’t begin with a subject. I begin with a question. The work slowly finds the form it needs.
Sometimes it becomes documentary photography.
Sometimes infrared.
Sometimes hand-coloured prints with gold leaf.
Sometimes film, ceramics or installations.
The material is never the starting point. The question decides the language.
I have learned that curiosity is a form of care.
Sharing the work has become part of the work. Through exhibitions, conversations, workshops and collaborations with schools and museums, the questions continue to grow.
Art, for me, is never finished. It simply continues in another form. Every project becomes the beginning of the next. I don’t try to find the way. I try to keep a direction. A direction guided by curiosity, attention, care and wonder.I believe we live better lives when we slow down enough to truly see.
I don’t want to invite you into my answers. I want to invite you into my questions.
Perhaps that is where my art begins.
Photo: Inger Sandberg
Selected Awards
Some of my clients:
