BJORN LARSSON IN THE MIDST OF NATURE / WAR HABITAT / ON SAFARI Photographs from war as well as close ups from wild animals and bird have a lot in common. Both need some sort of construction around the production. The war photographers are embedded and wild-life photographers build hide outs or plant cameras inside nests, etc. The images are not substitute for the human eye but rather admittance to impossible places and spaces. My work is a photographic examination of landscape-representation in museums and their ideological background.
In the Midst of Nature Photographs 1998-1999 From Biological museums in, Stockholm, Uppsala, Sˆdert‰ lje, Sweden, and from Turku Finland. War Habitat Photographs , 2001-2006 From Volgograd State Panoramic Museum in Volgograd (Stalingrad), Russia and October War Museum in Cairo,Egypt. On Safari Photographs , 2003 From Livingstone Museum, Livingstone, Zambia
SOOKYOUNG HUH CORE Small but Significant Having had 11 years of living in different places you might expect I have found ways of adapting to new situations and surroundings. Not at all! But if there is one thing I can be sure of it is that my body will be always pushing forward, challenging itself, while the oneĂŒs mind is struggling with unfamiliar - both the attractions and strangeness of different societies, climates and surroundings. An example of this might be my project Core. I begin by collecting stray hairs and similar bits and pieces from my friends and myself. I then position this material and explore these small structures photographically. This is a strangely intimate exchange. It has been a way of getting to know new people in strange places more deeply. I keep the samples I collect remembrances of my friends (and their children & pets!) I experience a great sense of frustration and loss at being separated from places that I love. Sometimes I think of the all the places I have been and all the things I have done as a kind of mythic challenge. In Ancient Greek mythology, Theseus used string to find his way out of the Labyrinth. Perhaps my samples of hair will eventually lead me to where I need to go and belong. Hair and scales of skin degrade into dust and dust is a metaphor of time elapsing. Although our bodies are continually renewing themselves we know this process does not go on forever. From dust, we are told, we come and to dust we will return. But dust can come alive with light, friendship and humour. The dusts in my works are marks where of where I have been. Huh, Sookyoung