Extracts from Project “Motstånd” (“Resistance”)
Clear-cut. Regeneration area. A place where the old and infirm are leveled with the ground to give way to the new, the growing.
I’m standing there in the middle of the clear-cut. I identify with the old, the thing that needs to be replaced. What has become obsolete, useless, outdated.
I watch from a distance, through the camera, though I stand right in the middle. It is like a filter between me and reality. Maybe because I dare nothing else, because reality, without the camera as a filter, would be so tangible that I would resign and accept. That it is as it is.
But I want to resist. I don’t want the old to be completely obsolete. The useless must be able to be made usable, have a right to exist, among the new.
I don’t want to describe the regeneration area objectively. On the contrary. I want to add my own emotional content to the image choices I make. I look at the old stuff. When I photograph it, it becomes something that is new.
In this way, I take my place in the new. That’s my resistance.