Facts
Title: Nature hidden in plain sight (Naturen som vi ser eller overser)
Art project status: work in progress 2015-25.
Artist’s Statement
Birthe Havmøller: My photographic works are poetic metaphors. They are to be read as visual poems. Forget about where the photo was taken and instead, go directly into the experience of Nature’s organic shapes and structures and see if the work resonates with you.
I see the landscape as an extension of the physical body, a kind of external memory. I mirror my inner landscapes out into the world and photograph them. This method is an intuitive process; a search for a state of being and a spiritual recognition of belonging at a time when the technological development of our Western culture inevitably moves us further and further away from Nature. Now, as the media talk about the “climate crisis” and people go out into Nature in search of a real safe space during the terrible “pandemic”, I focus on creating works that depict the harmony and poetry of Nature. – A manifestation of a gaze and synchronicities that seem more important than ever.
The art project: Nature hidden in plain Sight
This body of works has been made over a long period. It consists of two large bodies of photographic works: Nature hidden in plain sight and Obscure Places, 20+ panoramas (triptychs) with quiet landscapes. All the works are intimate; they invite the viewer to go up close and take their time to immerse themselves in the small details. Alongside this body of works, I am working on a dummy artist’s book to accompany a future exhibition.
Creative practice
Classic black-and-white photography is the core of my artistic practice. My new works are an extension of the analog photography and photopolymer prints I made in the 1990s. The enigmatic has a recurring place in my imagery in the form of the old divine symbols: vesica piscis, the circle, the spiral, etc. Since 2015, I have refined my visual language and printed my photographs as archival fine art inkjet prints on cotton paper; it is important to me that the first impression you get when you touch the work/sheet is a nice subtle sensory experience of the paper’s organic structure.
Sustainable prints
There is no polymer or “plastic” utilized in this fine art print process that may erode, dissolve or in another way be transformed into microplastic particles, entering the food chains, and polluting the world.
2017. Test prints; triptychs from the series ‘Obscure Places’.
2018. The artist’s studio: a cluster of works.