Photographic transgressions by Nora Ceciliedatter Nerdrum

The Remembrance of Things Past by Selene Wendt

BOVSIA, Milano/Europa 2000 by Gavin Jantjes

Photographic transgressions

An encounter with Hedevig Anker’s photos immediately engenders a sense of silence and stillness. The pictures depict the apparently unchangeable; objects and architectural elements  affected only by the changing light of the seasons.

The motifs in Hedevig Anker’s latest photographs are located in two small dwelling houses in the remote island of Leka on the North-Western coast of Norway. The houses are vacated. Only the traces of a life lived remain. Unlike previous projects, where the artist’s private memories have taken centre stage, the memories from the houses in Leka belong to women that the artist never knew. The houses are full of secrets that are  barely perceptible. Anker attempts to probe the hidden stories through her pictures, while she is exploring the frontiers of narrative power and the significance of the photographic medium. How much can a picture reveal and how much does it conceal?  
   
A similar interest in the qualities of a place and the house as a mental universe is also found in Gaston Bachelard’s important work The Poetics of Space – a phenomenological study of architectural structures. In his book of 1958 Bachelard focuses on how we perceive intimate rooms. According to him, the existential perception of the room’s character impresses on our memory – the memories are thus associated with physical experience in definite, spatial contexts: “…the house is one of the greatest powers of imagination for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind.”

Anker always works with series, usually associated with definite locations or building structures. The selection process is deliberate, and the place should preferably be of special significance to the artist. Her childhood home and her paternal grandmother’s apartment have been central to previous projects. This time too, Anker’s affiliation to the place is important, even if it originates later in her life. The pictures appear as immediate results of her physical and mental experience of the houses in Leka. To Anker, the camera is an extension of her body – it records her subjective perception of the room.

The photographic medium was not an obvious choice for Hedevig Anker. The artist also works systematically  to transgress the characteristics of the photographic picture. In the first place, this applies to the way the camera records space; the artist is constantly attempting to transgress the perspective so that the focus in the picture lies in the face rather than in depth. The comparison is close with abstract painters such as Mark Rothko. Like Rothko, Anker lets colour dominate the pictures, while the subject is secondary. 
The transgression of genres is also apparent from Anker’s treatment of time. The apparently eternal states in the artist’s pictures are in conflict with that quality of recording  the moment. One of the core values of photography is the temporary quality. In his book Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes describes how the finished act constitute the essence of photography: ”that has been […] it has been there, and yet immediately separated; it has been absolutely, irrefutably present, and yet already deferred.”  
Anker’s treatment of time thus appears like an intentional contradiction in terms. She never manipulates – the pictures are indeed the result of one single exposure – consequently one single moment. At the same time they are characterised by a predilection for the eternal qualities of the painting. In a painting the permanence is built into the creative process – it is an inevitable part of the finished product. Hedevig Anker therefore moves along the border between the two media. She transgresses the differences between the photograph and the painting while showing how they often meet in a common exploration of the problem.     

Anker’s compositions are understated. All the elements are given equal value and the photos are taken at a time of day when the light is sparse and less intense. The pictures are restrained and cautious.
At the same time, Anker is able to activate the spectator; where others might adopt a more intense approach, she provokes a reaction by calling attention to the insignificant and the immobile. Through her photography Anker guides the spectator in remembering what belongs in the past, but which also exists in the rooms where we live in and the objects with which we interact every day.

Bachelard, Gaston ([1964] 1994)The poetics of space, Boston: Beacon Press, s. 6
Barthes, Roland ([1980] 1981)Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang s.77

Nora Ceciliedatter Nerdrum
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The Remembrance of Things Past

Hedevig Anker's artistic language is enriched through the visual vocabulary of both photography and painting. Her approach to photography is built on a painterly sensibility; in fact her most abstract photographs resemble paintings. It is as though Hedevig Anker brings the whole history of painting into her photographs. We find the influence of some of the greatest names in art in her work: Vermeer’s treatment of light, Mondrian’s division of the grid, and Robert Ryman’s mastery of white on white compositions. Subtle nuances in color and a clear understanding of form and composition, along with unusual perspectives and attention to detail, contribute to Hedevig Anker’s serene and balanced photographs.
While Hedevig Anker’s photographs do, in the most traditional sense of photography, capture reality, they do not convey a specific narrative. Her photographic reality involves a visual transference of the artist’s psyche. While she strips down compositions to the essentials, sometimes involving no more than the crack on a wall or raindrops on a windowpane, she manages to express deep emotions in her cold, minimal photographs. Seemingly insignificant details take on monumental proportions, even though we cannot always make out what she captures. Like the play of memory in the mind, the photographs are somewhat blurred and vague; at other times crystal clear, with slight cracks and gaps, all techniques reflecting how memory works. The events in Hedevig Anker’s life come together in a thought provoking "less-is-more" aesthetic.
Fascinating similarities between Hedevig Anker’s photographs and the realist paintings of the Norwegian artist Ida Lorentzen emerge, which help shed light on the essence of Hedevig Anker’s work. Both artists chose to face the challenge of conveying a loss by depicting personal spaces. For Ida Lorentzen this involves creating a fictional, painted space based on the remembrance of interiors from past and present. In contrast, Hedevig Anker crafts her photographs directly from reality. Nevertheless, her photographs capture the mood in a way that results in an abstraction of that reality. She zooms in and edits, changes perspectives and focus -- sometimes beyond recognition. She captures the framework of the space in which her childhood unfolded. One has a clear sense that Hedevig Anker attempts to fill a void by concentrating on the void, just as Ida Lorentzen began painting interiors to create a psychological support structure as a result of the traumatic experience of her mother’s death many years ago.
The most recent series Slemdal #1-5, 2001 were taken in Hedevig Anker's childhood home, and bears most emotional resonance for the artist. The last photograph in this series is completely abstract and blurry. Such an extreme photographic style is an exception within her work; everything but color, form, and composition have been eliminated. This is how she remembers big chunks of her childhood - as a big blur (as many of us do). The Slemdal series marks a turning point in Hedevig Anker’s artistic development. In earlier series, she could approach the images with the analytical mind of an emotionally detached photographer fascinated with the issues of form and composition. With this series, she had no emotional distance from the subject matter. The Slemdal series is all about saying goodbye. She captures her personal loss with these barren unfurnished rooms, and we can sense what Hedevig Anker must feel as she tries to make sense of the past, hold on to what was, and define it before it slips away into eternity. Although Hedevig Anker maintains an underlying interest in geometric forms, composition and balance throughout her work, she conveys in these recent photographs a compelling lesson in how to let go of the past by looking at it from an entirely different perspective.

Selene Wendt
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