Trespassing
by Ole Brodersen
The forces of nature are natural phenomena always present in a landscape, beyond human control. Ole Brodersen‘s work is dedicated to unveiling this presence by exploring encounters between man-made objects and untouched nature.
The artist collects various materials such as styrofoam, pieces of sailcloth and rope. Most of the material is found while rummaging through his grandfathers shed or his father‘s sail loft. Out of these Ole fashions markers; i.e. floats, flags and kites, sometimes with attached additional sparklers, LED-lights or other light sources. Forces of wind, currents and waves are harnessed and the unfoldings in these encounters are recorded; how nature composes and rearranges these markers. The process involves a large format camera and often long exposures.
Photography reveals the invisible figure of movement in every landscape. Something that is unnoticed, rather than undetectable. A useful analogy is false-color, a technique used in deep space imaging to visualize different unobservable phenomena. Images taken by telescopes are often in wavelengths invisible to the human eye, and needs to be mapped into our perceptual range. We know that these astronomical phenomena aren‘t presented the way they actually look, but otherwise they would remain undetected by us.
The figure of movement that appears (or the absence of it) is an impersonal characteristic of a given landscape. It is a result of the weather conditions that particular day, but also of the markers being used. The entire procedure enables nature to yield a figure of movement. Invisible force is captured into a visible sign.
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| Cloth #04, 2016 C-print © Ole Brodersen |
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| Cloth and string #09, 2016 C-print © Ole Brodersen |
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| Copper, wood and styrofoam #01, 2015 C-print © Ole Brodersen |
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| Light and string #01, 2016 C-print © Ole Brodersen |
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| Light, kite and string #01 2016 C-print © Ole Brodersen |
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| String, cloth and kite #07, 2016 C-print © Ole Brodersen |
Ole Brodersen is a Norwegian art photographer who works with staged landscapes. His most known series “Trespassing” explores encounters between man and nature, and is produced in the island society Lyngør where he grew up as 12th generation. He is strongly affiliated to this place and the maritime elements here dominate his motifs. His father is a sail-maker, his grandfather was a sailor and he himself used to row to school.
Brodersen‘s photographs was last shown at the Scandinavia House in New York; his participation supported by the Norwegian Consulate and mentioned by the New Yorker and Harper‘s Magazine. His works has been acquired by private and public collections in Norway, Sweden, Serbia, Malawi, the United Arab Emirates and USA. Brodersen has sojourned in New York, Lima, Prague, Belgrade, Stockholm and Porto. He is a member of Norwegian Society of Fine Art Photographers and Norwegian Visual Artist‘s Association.
Ole Brodersen's website: www.olebrodersen.com