I´m on Iceland! I´m traveling with my friend and colleague Victoria. We both love this country, and both Victoria and I feel that this landscape suits our photography very well. What I love about Iceland is the diversity of the landscape, and most of all I love the inhospitable landscape with black lava, black sand and smoke coming up from the ground. Right now we´re still in Reykjavik. We decided to stay here a couple of days first, to relax a bit and have a great time!
Our plan is to rent a car, drive around the south coast of Iceland and work on our own photography projects together. The best thing about Victoria is that I know she understands what I need when I´m working on a picture. That´s why she can be the best assistant in the world. She can also be an amazing model for my photographs, as I know that I can ask her to do almost anything and she will do it because she understands the importance of it and what I need to fulfill my vision.
When we did our project Roots of imagination, we worked so well together, pushing each other all the time, producing a lot of images. What I´m going to do different this time is that I have one project that I will work on, in order to stay focused. This is a project that I´m very excited to start working on, and I´m not yet sure in what direction it will take me!
Right now, I call this project ”The Sleep Project”. In this project, I will investigate the state between being awake and falling asleep. This is a state that I´ve been thinking a lot about lately. It´s a state that makes me wonder. What is this borderland between reality and dream? My plan is to investigate this state with my photography. This is the state where you might experience the hypnic jerk, which means that you feel like you´re falling or slipping. Or you may see strong colors and patterns or get sleep paralysis. So many scary and interesting things happens at this moment that I feel I have to do a project about this, examining it in my own, artistic way. If you have any thoughts about this state, please tell me about it, I would love to know!
Images shot in studio with a black back drop. When I shot these images as test images I realized that I want to start working on ”The Sleep Project”. The image in the middle is a composite from when I visited Iceland last time in 2010.
