About Flederland (1)
Flederland is a project I have been working on since 2003. The idea came when I was "engineering " photos in the analog photolab at Academie Minerva. Since then, the way in which I work has become more digital in nature and less documentary.
Everything in this project has its roots in the idea that nothing is what it seems. Reality as it is percieved is not reality like it is. With that point of view any dreamworld is just as plausible as the one that we've all agreed upon to be real. I decided to build a dreamworld where not only the nice dreams get all the attention. The dark side and the nightmares should not be neglected. Denying the dark side is denying a part of the human soul.
The shadows in particular are very interesting, there's something beautiful hidden there, there's always something new to discover. If you only focus on the brighter parts of my pictures, you miss half of the picture.
The emphasis on the shadows is not only essential for the image, it shows a lot about how a person handles the darker sides of life. If you can see the beauty of, then you try to live life to the fullest. That's a very brief explanation of the philosophical side of the project. More can be read in my graduationessay, which can be recieved by email.
The step from analog photography to digital "manipulation" (I hate that word, but at the moment I can't find a good translation) was a logical one. Certainly the most logical step I could take during my studies at Academie Minerva. It gave me the possibility to work very fast and translate from thought to image in a matter of hours rather than weeks. I had an advantage at working with the computer because of my knowledge of different techniques used in photography (the terminology is mostly the same in the lab and in the programme). Because of that I could work faster, because I would know in advance how a filter or modus would affect the image. And above all I could take much more liberty in my work this way than I ever could in the lab.
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