Classiq - An online journal that celebrates cinema, culture, style and storytelling.

30 November 2024

November newsletter: Aftermath, Circus Mirandus and Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud

Photos: Classiq Journal

“I remember that winter because it had brought
the heaviest snow I had ever seen. Snow had fallen
steadily all night long and in the morning I woke in
a room filled with light and silence, the whole world seemed
to be held in a dream-like stillness. It was a magical day…
and it was on that day I made The Snowman.”

Raymond Briggs

Left: Window art by Ars Ana

Viewing

The Double Life of Véronique, 1991
Krzysztof Kieślowski

Here is a film that doesn’t want to give answers but take us on a journey, leaving us make our own sense of its meaning. Irène Jacob’s double role as two women, complete strangers, whose lives are mysteriously linked and connected through music, is a very tactile performance and fascinating to watch. Kieślowski leaves space for echoing our own personal interpretation, doubts and wonders and irrational feelings, he leaves space for something that is beyond the visual, he leaves space for the music. He finds he right balance between the obvious and the mysterious.

In Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969
Peter R. Hunt

Yes, Sean Connery was the first, and many argue, the ultimate James Bond, but it was also argued that from Dr. No through to You Only Live Twice, Bond had evolved into caricature while the films “were dominated by hardware, empty spectacle, and comedic gadgets.” And now, after 25 Bond films, we know we’ve come to love a Bond film that is so much more than pure entertainment. For that, I personally believe we have to thank Daniel Craig, Timothy Dalton, and even George Lazenby, because In Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the best Bond films. In my interview with Matt Needle, who a few years back carried out the daunting yet impeccably pulled off personal task of creating the posters for all 25 Bond films, when I asked him about his favourite Bond films, the illustrator said: “It’s either Goldfinger, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service or Goldeneye though. I love all three for different reasons. As mentioned, Goldfinger was the first Bond I saw, and Goldeneye was the first I saw at a cinema. And On Her Majesty’s Secret Service just feels so different but integral to the series to creatively move the franchise forward.”

From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball

But we do love each Bond film for different reasons (as Matt Needle mentioned above), don’t we? And who says we need a reason for another Sean Connery Bond marathon? After all, as Terrence Young (From Russia with Love, Thunderball) said, “The trouble with Bond films now is that people are trying to analyze them and explain them and their success. There is nothing to explain. They are just entertainment and their timing is right.”

The Snowman, 1982

Based on the timeless book without words by Raymond Briggs from 1978, the short film, also without words, is tender and telling in the most beautiful way. It’s about the wonder and innocence of childhood, and about true friendship. The power of childhood is about believing and imagination, not about seeing.

Ace in the Hole, 1951
Billy Wilder

Of all the great roles of Kirk Douglas, the antihero he played in Ace in the Hole – a down on his luck journalist, with a past, and a reputation that doesn’t help him much in securing a new job, and whose lust to develop a sensational story stops at nothing – must be my favourite. The film itself is a different kind of noir, a landmark for the genre, as Billy Wilder addresses the usual subjects of noir in an unusual manner. An in depth study of human deception, avarice and social position, and Wilder chooses to focus on the frail state of humans to depict a portrait of a society that is selling everything it can, no matter what the real cost is in terms of life preservation. The role of mass media is being analyzed bare naked – in this regard, the Spanish translation of the title, El gran carnaval, says it all.

Left: Quote by Haruki Murakami, from The T-shirts I Love

Reading

Circus Mirandus is like a day dream, because it keeps the wonder alive, the way a night dream hardly can because when you wake up you know it was just a dream. As soon as my son and I read it, it became a new classic.

Originally published in Japan in 1965, Take Ivy, with photographs by Teruyoshi Hayashida, set off an explosion of American-influenced “Ivy Style” fashion among students in the trendy Ginza shopping district of Tokyo. Capturing the unique academic fashion of the campuses of America’s elite, Ivy League universities, Take Ivy is considered a definitive document of this particular style. For a long time, it was only available in Japanese and hard to find. A small-run reprint came out in Japan in 2006 and sold out almost immediately. In 2010, it was finally published in English and it’s taken me more than a decade to purchase it. But that’s ok, because the style, with its timeless and transcendent appeal, has survived the decades and it always will. It truly is the American style that I love the most and one only has to watch Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor or All the President’s Men to understand why. Nobody has done the preppy look on screen quite like Robert Redford.

I do love an understudied topic within cinema, and poster design certainly is one – film costume also used to be one (but, thankfully, not that much anymore), which is why I have long been a fervent proponent of costume design as one of cinema’s most far-reaching influences. My many interviews with film poster designers and illustrators are proof of my affinity for the topic, so it’s only fair that the new book Film by Design: The Art of the Movie Poster came under my radar.

Listening

The soundtrack: The Double Life of Véronique

The podcast: Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud. The latest episode with Kristin Scott Thomas is brilliant! An actor and a fashion designer talk clothes identity. Bella Freud’s Sunday Stories are also wonderful to explore.

The album: Aftermath, The Rolling Stones

Making

“Imagine the world in a far away future, what will history tell about us? And what is the legacy we are leaving behind?” I feel that one of the things that draws Ana Gurduza, of Ars Ana, to create is our own human kind, in all its complexity, uniqueness and ephemerality, all beautifully interwoven by the imaginary. Ana is a maker. In ink lines, watercolour, illustration, ceramic objects and metal engraving. But she is more than a maker, because there is poetry in each and every one’s of Ana’s creations.

Exploring

The school of film that is Institut Lumière. “The institute is a public house that welcomes great, timeless films, wonderful forgotten films, lost amazing films, and historical films from all over the world. It is a house where our memory is kept alive, shared, and cared for. It is also a house of restoration and transmission. It is a cinema adventure and, thus, a human adventure.” – Irène Jacob (The Double Life of Véronique), president of Institut Lumière

On an end note…

People who don’t read are unable to have an opinion of their own on anything.

The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Racquet’s Rennae Stubbs tennis podcast. Gone to Timbuktu with Sophy Roberts. Wachstumsversuche, with Sarah Schill. Sirene Journal, Racquet, and Waves & Woods in print.

“For me, a certain sign of quality or class in art is that when I read,
see or listen to something, I suddenly get an acute, clear feeling
that somebody’s formulated something which I’ve experienced or
thought; exactly the same thing but with the help of a better
sentence or better visual arrangement or better composition
of sounds than I could have imagined.”

Krzysztof Kieślowski

Posted by classiq in Books, Culture, Film, Newsletter | | Comments Off

25 November 2024

Just the right girl: Gloria Grahame in “In a Lonely Place”

”In a Lonely Place”, 1950. Columbia Pictures

Humphrey Bogart wanted Lauren Bacall for the part. The Studio wanted Ginger Rogers. Nicholas Ray wanted Gloria Grahame. He was right. In a Lonely Place wouldn’t be the film that it is without Gloria Grahame. One of film noir’s most defining actors, Gloria Grahame brought even her femme fatale characters a raw, vulnerable sensuality. She was not simply pretty. Her glamour and sexuality hid surprising, unexpected emotional registers. Her bad girls were human. Her good girls had a hard-won strength. Her characters were smart, daring, warm. I can never quite figure out Gloria Grahame on screen.

“Were the cinema suddenly to cease to exist, most directors would be in no way at a loss; Nicholas Ray would,” Jean-Luc Godard wrote in the 1950s. “After seeing Johnny Guitar or Rebel Without a Cause, one cannot but feel that here is something which exists only in the cinema, which would be nothing in a novel, the stage or anywhere else, but which becomes fantastically beautiful on the screen.” I immediately visualize Gloria Grahame’s claustrophobic fear in a close-up with Bogart, or the sinister look in his eyes in another shot just because the light only falls on his face, or the rare moment of safety and security between the two at the nightclub right before the camera cuts to a shot of a Grahame’s suddenly worried face blocked by Bogart’s half-turned face, suspicion creeping in, in the direction of her looking. Cinema must belong to cinema. In a Lonely Place is one of the finest depictions of Hollywood, and one of the most poignant films noir, and yet Ray does not feel restricted in what he has to say by the limits of the genre, or by one-sided characters (their ambivalence is more realistic and sincere than most of the more conventional characters) there is something deeply personal and subtle behind his strong narrative and visually overwhelming obsession.

”In a Lonely Place”, 1950. Columbia Pictures

Dixon Steele (Bogart) is a troubled screenwriter whose early success has now a bitter taste after his latest professional failures. And his struggles with alcohol and a short-fused temper don’t help when he becomes the prime suspect in the crime of a young woman. She was the coatcheck girl at the nightclub he had attended the night before. He had asked her to accompany him home and explain to him the plot of a current bestseller which he has to adapt but refuses to read – that’s the extent of his contempt regarding the kind of work he is now being offered. Laurel (Gloria Grahame), Steele’s beautiful new neighbour, becomes his only alibi. Their paths had crossed the night before when Laurel passed between Dix and Mildred on the patio leading up to his apartment. Wearing a light-coloured coat, her hands in the pockets, “she glanced up at him, half-smiling, as she apologized”, definitely taking a liking to him. She also happened to see the girl leave his apartment.

Laurel has got her own troubled past, as a struggling actress scarred by life, and they find something in each other, something more than love, a gentle strength in the relationship that will develop between them.

When Laurel is brought in for questioning in the morning, she is wearing wide-legged slacks (I love this word because it always reminds me how Katharine Hepburn liked to say slacks instead of trousers – “Are you sure these too should be slacks? Fine by me if fine by you,” producer Joe Mankiewicz wrote to Hepburn on the trouser suit sketch of costume designer Adrian for The Philadelphia Story), a turtleneck, a checked jacket and flat sandals. Tomboyish is not just her look, but her attitude, too. “She sits down, spots a carton of coffee, tilts a paper cup to see if there’s any in it. Salt,” writes Bernard Eisenschitz in the book Nicholas Ray: An American Journey referring to the scriptwriter Andrew Solt, “was shocked by the vulgarity of her gesture (‘It’s wrong. A real floozie will do that, she never would’), failing to recognize either its primary meaning (Laurel was woken by the police and it’s still very early) or its secondary one (her frankness, her way of making what she wants quite clear).” She’s a natural. Dix, outwardly tough, inwardly vulnerable, knows it’s a good thing she’s on his side. With her encouragement, he can write again, and he’s content with his work. But their own demons are too strong and whatever hopes and dreams Steele and Laurel might have had, they are crushed too soon and too radically.

”In a Lonely Place”, 1950. Columbia Pictures

Cool and composed, with her elusive smile, eyebrows raised and voice slightly inflicted, she strides down the courtyard in straight-lined skirts and turtlenecks – “nu fluff, please”, Nicholas Ray’s script notes – revealing a buttoned-up, controlled character. The subtle, yet optimum effect of Gloria’s costumes are part of Ray’s visual design, alluding to deeper meanings behind appearance and words. “The simpler, more direct, more honest, better it will create Laurel, flesh and blood. She the same girl in her reactions to different situations,” Ray noted in the script. Her Jean Louis costumes, striking in their simplicity and timeless elegance, all buttoned up, even her evening gowns and fur-cuffed robe, are “both erotic and very time-bound, awareness of her body, the frankness of her desire, the ambiguity nevertheless of her eroticism,” further concludes Eisenschitz.

The risks she takes are not visible. Yes, she is the right girl, but sometimes it’s not enough.

”In a Lonely Place”, 1950. Columbia Pictures

In conversation with artist Tatsuro Kiuchi

Illustration by Tatsuro Kiuchi

Tatsuro Kiuchi is a Tokyo-based illustrator, painter and educator. He is one of the most influential illustrators in Japan, having contributed an extraordinary variety to the field and to the visual culture of our time. He creates art that attracts the eye, yet familiar and in total engagement with life and our surroundings; art that trusts the audience to be clear-eyed and capable of enthusiasm. With particular attention to composition, depth, color and light, Tatsuro Kiuchi’s illustrations feel actively, restlessly alive, yet foster a sense of warmth and tranquility.

In our recent interview for Beneficial Shock! magazine, Tatsuro Kiuchi and I talk about the artists he recommends to his students, the biggest challenge of illustrating movie posters and about recently tracing the film memories of his teenage years. You can read the full interview on the Beneficial Shock! website.

“By communicating, I am not talking about concepts, emotions,
and other things that are intangible, but I mean concrete things
that most people can immediately understand what is depicted,
such as flowers, vases, people, dogs, etc.
What you see visually is essential.
No matter how good the concept is, the illustration is not
so successful if it is not interesting for your eyes to look at.”

An illustration by Tatsuro Kiuchi for “Gobangiri”, a film by Kazuya Shiraishi

Instagram: @tatsurokiuchi

October newsletter: Beautifully dark Scandinavian autumn, a short bedtime story, and The Man from Laramie

Photos: Classiq Journal

”Savoring the promise of autumn just begun.”

Callum Robinson, “Treasure”

Viewing

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974
Martin Scorsese

I love how different this film is from Martin Scorsese’s other films. And I wanted to rewatch it just for Kris Kristofferson. The story of a woman, Alice (Ellen Burstyn), who takes the road and her life in her own hands. This is one of those great American road movies of the 1970s, bringing together elements such as the great outdoors, rock ‘n’ roll and characters who thrive in a new found freedom, and I am surprised why it is not considered as such. Everything happens so naturally and realistically on screen, in the story and between the actors, and Scorsese’s strong feel for characters is best felt both in Alice and in the depiction of the two contrasting male individualities, played by Harvey Keitel and Kris Kristoffersen. “Spending time with Kris when we made ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’ was one of the highlights of my life. What a sweet, warm family spirit we all shared on that picture — Ellen Burstyn, Diane Ladd, Alfred Lutter, and Jodie Foster, both so young, and Kris. His presence…the voice, the cool, benign manner, the way he moved… Onscreen or in person, he brought all of himself. He gave so much heart and humor to his character, and to all of our days shooting in Tucson. What a beautiful human being. What a great artist.” – Martin Scorsese

The Hunt, 2012
Thomas Vinterberg

If I were to describe the atmosphere in Thomas Vinterberg’s films, I would resume to the words the director himself used when he talked about his Danish films as opposed to his English language movies: “It seems that when I dip my hands into my own backyard, it becomes universal. When I reach out for the universal, the opposite happens.” In The Hunt, Mads Mikkelsen plays Lucas, a teacher by training but who now works as a daycare employee after he lost his job. He is professionally decent, caring, kind, and he is falsely accused by a kid of inappropriate behaviour. He suddenly finds himself standing alone in a hostile world. It shows how easily we judge, how easily we toss out friends. It’s heartbreaking and it shook me to the core. The only one who shows unconditional faith in him, besides his son, is his only true friend, his son’s godfather, and those scenes between them had a great effect on me, because they showed that it doesn’t take much, just a single word or gesture, to assure someone of your trust or shatter his confidence and make his world crumble. And the most harrowing thing about this remarkable film is that Lucas, often just through the look in his eyes, transmits what it must feel like to feel guilty about a crime he didn’t commit – there are no easy outs for the audience. Because when you are wrongly accused of something, even if you are proved innocent, there is an irremediable harm done, and everyone, except that one true friend, might still consider you guilty. That’s something unequivocally universal, too.

Spectre, 2015
Sam Mendes

This time around, I watched it for the Mexico City opening scene alone, where they recreated a magnificent Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) festival. A Halloween of sorts, the more authentic kind.

The Man from Laramie, 1955
Anthony Mann

Mann was not interested in the old idealized West and his westerns have something dark in them, going places other filmmakers altogether dismissed. In The Man from Laramie, James Stewart is an isolated character, eschewing stereotypes. It’s in Mann’s films, as well as in Hitchcock’s, when I like Stewart best, and when he has shown his best as an actor. It takes a director, it seems, to unleash an actor from relatable hero images and give him the trust and freedom to explore different characters and new personal depths.

Reading

Seven Gothic Tales, by Isak Dinesen.

The Simple Things, my latest discovery in magazines. From the editor’s letter (there’s nothing I loath more about a magazine, great as it may be in any other way, than one that lacks a beautifully written editor’s letter, and, thankfully, Lisa Sykes has a way with words) to the very last page, featuring a heartwarming short story, Treasure, by Callum Robinson, this magazine, and especially the October issue, appropriately titled “Weave”, is about the simple things and taking time to live well.

In the latest issue of Financial Times Weekend, Yuval Noah Harari (have you read Sapiens and Homo Deus?) writes the article Beware the march of AI beaurocrats, about the primitive AIs that are the social media algorithms, who “have reshaped the world, exerting enormous influence on human society” and the very “narrow goal, perfect for idiot servants” they have been tasked with: “to increase user engagement”. And that “in pursuit of user engagement, the algorithms made a dangerous discovery. By experimenting on millions of guinea pigs”, these primitive AIs “learnt that greed, hate and fear increase user engagement.” It’s so simple that it’s frightful.

Légende no.8: Nadal. Because one must. It’s the end of the most beautiful era in tennis as I’ve known it.

Listening

The album: Kristofferson, Kris Kristofferson

The soundtrack: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Making

During a recent trip to Copenhagen, strolling on one of the city’s most beautiful streets, Værnedamsvej, lined with wine and cheese shops, fresh flowers, and, some argue, the best café in the Danish capital, Italo Caffe, I found myself in front of the small contemporary art gallery HannemannLund by pure chance. The space is used as an exhibition room and also a studio, which makes it a very special experience. Artist and gallery owner Mette Hannemann herself was hard at work inside and incredibly welcoming. And truth be told, any artist who has a beautiful tennis artwork displayed would win me over in an instant anyway.

Exploring

Copenhagen and Denmark in the midst and mist of autumn. Not the best choice for autumn, one might argue, but when one’s spirit is undampened, and determined to have a taste of a noir Scandinavian autumn, all is alright, and then some, come rain, drizzle and fog. And rain, drizzle and fog did all come. Yet we found it beautiful – experiencing a city where bikes outrun cars played a fairly important part in it, I will admit. From walks in Fredericksberg Park, pastries at Hart Bageri, collecting illustrations from different cultural outposts, rummaging special Isak Dinesen and Hans Christian Andersen editions in bookshops, and art gallery and record store hopping, to a Nyhavn stroll from across the ship-lined canal for a better view, a day trip to Louisiana Museumn and Deerhaven, the amazing park just north of Copenhagen, where deers roam free, and a train journey through rural Jutland, it was by far one of the best autumnal trips and a fast route to becoming a Scandophile.

And finally, Tivoli. I have never been a fan of amusement parks, and I would only put foot in one just for my son, but then again Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen’s storied amusement park and Hans Christian Andersen’s own inspiration for writing The Nightingale, is in a league of its own. The imposing and equally elegant brick entrance alone feels like a passage into a world a fantasy. I’ve never been a fan of Halloween either, but then again Tivoli has its own take on it and makes it right. Tivoli just works for adults and children alike.

On an end note

If I could choose an exhibition to see this autumn, that would be Christiane Spangsberg’s The Play (Tennis, Horse and Butterfly are the three themes), which will be on display at Østerbrohuset, Copenhagen, November 24th. I have had a long-time appreciation for the timeless and minimalist art of Christiane Spangsberg and I wish I could have caught her show while in town.

“It seems that when I dip my hands into my own backyard,
it becomes universal. When I reach out for the universal,
the opposite happens.”

Thomas Vinterberg

”The Play” by Christiane Spangsberg / “Tennis” painting by Mette Hannemann / New Mags bookstore

Posted by classiq in Books, Culture, Film, Newsletter | | Comments Off

21 October 2024

“There Are Not Many Rules in Art, but Being Honest Is One of Them”: In Conversation with Photographer Sarah Fuchs

Photograph by Sarah Fuchs

In the photography of Sarah Fuchs, light and shadow have a poetic function. Sarah has the ability to bring a subject to light, while leaving room in the shadows for seductive curiosity and imagination. Spare in detail, she orchestrates black and white in her photographs to create a visually interpreted sense of depth. Her colour photography, bearing traces of playfulness, is rich and free, yet another context with scope for the imagination, and her portraiture I can best describe as lyrical images that work more with character and the wonder of being than with physical beauty.

What started with travel photography has led in time to an artistic pursuit of a higher degree of abstraction, to new explorations, to a new ability to think in images in a more unconventional form and to the conviction that success is tied to one’s fulfilling one’s own artistic vision and not much else. With self expression, honesty and feeling at the center of her work, Sarah Fuchs is experimenting with an alternative perspective of photography, seeing it afresh.

Sarah’s work has been published in Kaltblut Magazine, Polka Magazine, Kyoto Journal, Passion Passport, YOLO Journal, The Culture-ist. She has two upcoming group exhibitions in Berlin, “The Look of Others” and “Soft”.

In our conversation, we talk about Sarah’s journey as a photographer, how her perception of visual beauty has changed over the years, Berlin, and turning to nature and her inner self as inspiration.

Photograph by Sarah Fuchs

Sarah, do you always carry a camera with you?

No, I don’t. I have to be in a particular mindset and, ideally, alone to take pictures. Obviously, this is different when I do a fashion shoot, but when I work on my projects I have to take a minute to get into the mode and slow down and tune into my surroundings. If I’m with friends, or in a rush, or on my way somewhere I am rarely able to just stop and take a picture and move on again. I need time to let the moment sink in.

A photographer once told me that his best photographs are still in his head. Are there moments when you feel you need to put your camera down even if you find yourself in that particular mindset to take pictures and just witness the moment?

Oh absolutely! I never take pictures at events, concerts, dinners, etc. Even when I work on my projects, there are moments when I realise I just need to take a break and a deep breath and be in the moment. It’s easy to start obsessing over getting the picture. I think my best work happens when I’m able to also let go.

What led you to photography? When did you know this was the path you wanted to pursue creatively?

It has been a roundabout journey to photography. I initially studied law and politics and worked in international politics and the NGO sector for many years. I was 28 when I decided I wanted to become a professional photographer. I think I resisted a creative career for a long time because of the uncertainty that comes with it. But the more I tried to make so-called sensible career choices the clearer it became that it just wasn’t possible for me to do it. Or rather, I wasn’t happy doing those jobs. I started getting into photography when I was living in South Korea and, initially, my way into photography was through travel photography. I was living all over the world and so I published my first pieces from all the places I lived in and visited. It was only when I moved to Berlin that I started pursuing the style that I’m currently working in.

”It’s easy to start obsessing over getting the picture.
I think my best work happens when I’m able to also let go.”

Was it hard to publish those first photographs?

It was easy enough to get them published in magazines actually. But mentally it was so hard! I struggled a lot to let go and just put my work out there. I was so afraid that people would judge it or not like it. It took a lot of time to get used to exposing myself like that. Especially as my work has gotten more and more intimate and personal.

”I think if we learn to look at the world with fresh eyes
we can see all the magic that is constantly going on around us.”

Photographs by Sarah Fuchs

Your project ‘Unwearied Still’ is an ode to Yeats’ poem ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’. Could you tell us a few words about this project? And what other artists do you find inspiration in?

I’m a very restless person. For most of my adult life, I have been constantly moving from country to country, changing what I do and where I go. So my biggest challenge when I started photography was that I kept running out of patience. I was constantly starting new projects and moving on to the next thing. And while my tempo and curiosity have allowed me to do a lot of work, it started to feel like a hinder at some point. I realised that, to grow in my field, I had to practice patience. So the series ‘Unwearied Still’ became an exercise in maintaining a routine and a consistent practice over a longer period. I take pictures of the swans in my neighbourhood almost every day, and I have been doing it for almost half a year now.

I find inspiration in a wide range of art and artists, it will be hard to list them all. I love surrealism. I’m a big fan of the work of Claude Cahun, Lee Miller, Dora Maar, and Florence Henri. I also love Czech Avant-Garde photographers like Jaroslav Rössler, František Drtikol, and Jaromir Funke.

”I realised that, to grow in my field,
I had to practice patience.”

Being observant and having your eye naturally tuned in to the world around you may often be the first elements that come to mind when thinking of photography. But what I find fascinating about your photography is that you approach it from different perspectives, imagination and illusion becoming part of your visual narrative. What is it that you seek to explore in your work?

I seek to find beauty in the unconventional, the uncanny, and the unexpected. I try to push the boundaries of what’s possible when reality is bent and reshaped through the lens and create imagery that challenges our perception of reality. What I love about photography is its ability to make the real unreal, and the unreal real. I think we are increasingly living disenchanted lives and I would love for my work, even for just a moment, to make people look and wonder what it is that they are seeing. To create a moment of surprise and a magical feeling. I think if we learn to look at the world with fresh eyes we can see all the magic that is constantly going on around us. Whether it’s a strange shadow over a face, or a sculptural shape of a bird in the water, or the bold colours of a flower. I love to think that even the most conventional thing can be mysterious and wonderful if we just look at it with new eyes.

I completely agree with you, we’ve lost that sense of wonder and belief in magic, a world we now seem to lose forever when we are no longer children, although I personally hope we don’t. Did you love stories as a child? Written or visual, or both?

I loved stories, and books a lot! I’m an only child, so I spent a lot of time in my own head and fantasy worlds. I was less preoccupied with visual stories. Films and photos didn’t matter to me as much until later in my teens. To this day, I love a good book that can transport me into a different world.

Photograph by Sarah Fuchs

Could you name a few of the books that made you dream the most or which had the most lasting impression on you?

As a child, I loved fantasy books. I don’t remember the specific titles of them anymore unfortunately. As I grew older, I got into Japanese and South Korean literature, specifically Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, and Han Kang.

Which were the films and photographers you were first drawn to when you began to be interested in visual storytelling?

I really love expressionist films, and I think German expressionism is very interesting and these films still inspire me today!

In the beginning, the photography I was drawn to was very rich in colour and texture. I would obsessively follow the work of the Magnum photographers. With time, I’ve come to see that type of imagery with a more critical eye, especially where western photographers travelled to other parts of the world and created a very narrow and orientalist representation of those places and people.

I agree and I have to admit that a few photographers have immediately sprung to mind when you mentioned this, the Western stereotypes about certain cultures and how they chose to focus on misery and pain leaving out positive aspects of those places. The fault is as much the photographers’ as the publishers’ who sold that image and message, I believe. You have lived in different parts of the world and travelled a lot. Has that fostered a deeper sense of empathy and understanding within you?

I think so. I have also been very privileged to travel a lot when I was younger, so I think the general exposure to different people and cultures from a young age made me a lot more aware of the different ways people live and to not judge or think of anything as better or worse than something else. My background studying international politics and law with a human rights focus further amplified this. Of course I will always have my context and my way of thinking about things, and it is hard to fully escape a mindset that is instilled by the society you grow up within. But I try to constantly learn and be open, and to question my own beliefs about things.

Photographs by Sarah Fuchs

And because you mentioned your German expressionism inspiration, do you prefer black and white, or colour photography?

My first love was colour photography, but I find myself drawn more and more to black and white photography. I think when it comes to portraits, I prefer black and white, but I also still love playing with bold and vibrant colours.

I play a lot with abstraction in my work, and I think there are certain shapes and subjects that are so familiar to us that it allows for a lot of abstraction. These kinds of subjects I prefer to photograph in black and white to really emphasise its shape and texture. A face is so recognisable to us that it can handle an extraordinary amount of abstraction. Similarly with hands. And animals like swans.

A defining moment for you as a photographer was: …

Perhaps a strange answer, but heartbreak was a defining moment for me as a photographer. Just after I moved to Berlin my 7-year-long relationship ended, and it left me with so much pain and confusion that I could only deal with through making art. The experimental style I work with now came out of that period. I was in disarray and so the photos I started making became as blurry and distorted and strange as I was feeling at the time. It was an incredibly liberating feeling. I felt like I had lost everything and that there was nothing left to lose. So I just started experimenting and playing with my medium. Before this time, I made very traditionally beautiful images. After the breakup, I think my images gained a new depth.

”I don’t think there are many rules in art,
but I do think being honest is one of them.
It is the hardest part about being an artist.”

What does now a beautiful image mean to you?

Oh, that is a tough one. The first answer that pops to mind is an image that is honest. I don’t think there are many rules in art, but I do think being honest is one of them. It is the hardest part about being an artist. I don’t think there is anything more special than seeing an image or a piece of art that feels like the artist was truly honest.

That’s a precious lesson to be learned especially these days when there is such a blurred line between authenticity and artificiality. What keeps you grounded and trusting your own voice?

I believe I have gotten better and better at just doing what I want to do, and not pursuing trends or creating images that I think people will like. And funnily enough, the less of a crap I give about what people think about my work, the more popular it seems to get! I think there is a big desire for authentic work and voices. This is still a work in progress for me, but it does give me hope that I’m on the right track. It has helped me to define success for myself as creating work that I am proud of regardless of other people’s opinions.

Photograph by Sarah Fuchs

That’s a fine and very sound, healthy, definition of success. What advice would you give someone struggling to change professional paths, or to find that something that make them feel fulfilled?

It’s so easy to look back at your past and wish for things to have been different. And it’s easy to get stuck thinking you have wasted time or that it’s too late to change.

My advice would be to not think about your younger self, or to think about all the time and effort that went into making other choices. If you feel like making a change or pursuing a creative career, then just go for it.

It will be hard, but it will be even harder to continue doing the same old thing.

You were born in Norway, you are currently based in Berlin, having lived in other parts of the world in between. Where do you call home?

Home has changed a lot over the years. Right now Berlin really feels like home, but it took time to get there. In the end, the place doesn’t matter that much, but the people that surround you. I have met some truly amazing people in this city, and I think Berlin now feels more like home than any place I have ever lived before.

“Berlin is, in many ways, a tough city, but it is also
a very open and honest city. And I like that a lot.”

What is the best part about living in Berlin and which you would miss if you lived anywhere else in the world?

I feel very free in Berlin. This could also be due to my age or the phase of life that I am in. Perhaps I would feel similarly in other cities at this time. But I happen to be feeling free here now. And it’s a place where a lot of outsiders find belonging. It is, in many ways, a tough city, but it is also a very open and honest city. And I like that a lot.

Do people make the place?

I think it’s both. This city also attracts a certain type of person that, in turn, creates the atmosphere that Berlin is known for. Without the remarkable history of Berlin, I don’t think it would be the kind of free-space it is today and has been for a long time.

Photograph by Sarah Fuchs

In this time and age, what do you wish people appreciated more?

Hmm, there are so many things I could list here. But I think kindness and weirdness and differentness. We are so fast at judging the things and people we don’t understand. This is not new, of course, but I do feel like we are all drifting apart and that there is little patience invested in understanding each other. I could probably write pages about this, and what I am sharing here is a massive oversimplification, but yeah, kindness and differences.

Sarah, one last question: If you could be anywhere in the world right now, preparing to take a photo, where would you want to be?

Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week.

Photograph by Sarah Fuchs

Website: sarah-fuchs.com | Instagram: @sarah.fuchs