The photography is dead – long live the photographer

10. jun 1998 First the good news: The photography has lost its trustworthyness, because the digital technology has made it obvious to anybody that every photopgraphy can be manipulated.

10. jun 1998// design /illustration //
And then the bad news: We are being told that actually the possibility of computer manipulation it self killed the reliability. And thus tend to maintain the illusion of the reliable photography.
Well, yes and here you are: one thousandth, even as much as one sixtieth second with the truth, nothing past, nothing since. Even though the exposal time were longer in the beginning, the truth is short. But reliable?
The danish author H.C.Andersen set up his own portraits – he should be seen in profile – and nowadays we hardly recognize him en face. A soldier in the spanish civil war shows his I’m-being-shot-stunt on several negatives. And a czech comrade vanish from the official photographies after he mysteriously jumps out of the window.
Every picture has always potentially been a fake. The photography is dead, it’s a trustworthy as a stone. If we watch a picture of a two year old child who picks up paving stone, nobody would connect this and the same stone behind the broken glass of the bank. Ceci n’est pas une pipe. On the other hand, if the picture shows a young squatter who weighs the paving stone in the hand, well, then we have the story. But not necessarily reliable.
On a meeting some years ago, when the photographer had just begun to fear for the electronic treatment of their pictures, the danish photographer Henrik Saxgren stressed out that the reliability af the photography didn’t matter. Most important is the trustworthy of the photographer himself.
If you rely in the photographer, the writer or the neighbor’s wife – whoever tells you a story – then the story may be reliable. The picture may tell you a story, but it better be a good one.
The picture of the bicycle messenger that cycles on the narrow bridge between two oil tanks, might as well have been manipulated, it would still be a good picture. The soldier in the spanish civil war is still a hell of a picture: you may get shot in a war! Not necessarily dead and gone, that’s not what the picture tells, although you might say: this is a man who dies for a just cause.
So let’s return to the good news: Long live the photography that carries a story, not as documentation rather than association.
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Catch me

Catch me

7. JUN 2014 // cd-cover
‘Grib mig’ is the title in danish, for the time being, of a coming cd, for which Marianne Mortensen and Michael Vesterskov had gathered four musicians for two days live recordings. I had the pleasure of being among the audience – and to design the provisional cover that together with a sign up form should make the audience pre-order […]
Egg pattern

Egg pattern

14. APR 2014 // design
Pattern with eggs for the tablecloth and the napkins for the easter celebration lunch. Enjoy.
iSticks and iSkins

iSticks and iSkins

13. DEC 2010 // ipad /mobilt web /offentligt rum
The danish boulevard newspaper, Ekstra Bladet, has decided to campaign for the freedom of speech – seen as the freedom of nudity. The danish MEP, Morten Messerschmidt is supporting by taking the discussion into the European Parliament.
Seven clicks towards Mobile First

Seven clicks towards Mobile First

The net is flooded with apps - for smartphones and tablets. But web sites are still better viewed on a computer, right? So the marketing department is happy and web design is business as usual. Maybe because apps and web sites are considered as two different things, rather than two versions of the same.
You may create coherence […]
Welt aus Schrift, type exhibition in Berlin

Welt aus Schrift, type exhibition in Berlin

12. NOV 2010 // design /typografi /berlin
Posters, books, jugend, bauhaus and de stijl ... via swiss to decon. The Welt Aus Schrift exhibition in Berlin is beauty in the literal sense of the letter. Do take a visit!
Bridges and letters in Amsterdam

Bridges and letters in Amsterdam

Round the city of Amsterdam, crossing the grachten - many of the bridges have their names displayed with ‘De Amsterdamse Brugletters’.
Spis Bare [Just Eat] receives Bording Prisen 2009

Spis Bare [Just Eat] receives Bording Prisen 2009

15. JUN 2009 // design /tidsskrift /spis bare
The danish magazine Spis Bare is a very inspirering food-professional og well-informed magazine med professional depth and delicious presentation.
Friday June 12 the magazine Spis Bare was awarded Anders Bordings Mediepris 2009. I have in collaboration with the editor, Mette Jensen, developed the magazine during the last […]

The user rules

1. MAJ 2000 // design /web
Usability and accessibilty on the web becomes synonymous with free choice and professionalizing of the user. Thus, she is more and less self responsible for being able to recieve the information of the websites.
The computer is putting still greater demands to the user, but despite of that it is easier to use today than ever. […]
This is not a logo

This is not a logo

The logo is not an element, a graphical form, but the character in the way it is exposed in various contexts. Thus, the logo is not a categorism any more, but a organism, a being.
I was pleased at ‘Total Typographic Saturday’ in the end of october, as Tore Rosbo and Clea Simonsen from the design bureau 1508 presented the identity […]
Web design, home pages for starters

Web design, home pages for starters

1. SEP 2001 // design /web
To the puritan any design that make any demands, will be noise. But you may as well take the opposite stand, that the purely textbased information is reserved for the skillede readers.
Torben Wilhelmsen, Thomas Green and Geert Sander Published first time in 1997. The book was one the selected Books of the Year in 1998 in Denmark. […]
ATypI Copenhagen dynamisk logo

ATypI Copenhagen logo

We had the napkin with the notes from the galla dinner at ATypI in Leipzig 2000, Henrik Birkvig and I on the flight back to Copenhagen, and we knew that we, together with Kim Pedersen, were about to organize ATypI in Copenhagen the year after. And already then we sketched the cliches for identity of the conference: Red-white, old-new […]
Cartoons that make somebody angry (2)

Cartoons that make somebody angry (2)

2. JAN 2019 // illustration
It’s even small things that fires up the anger. Most Danish politicians, when they are the target of the satyre, have learned to make the best of it. The former Danish Minister for Imigration and Integration is like others hailing the cartoonists by in public saying that she has made her own Wall of Fame from the cartoons.
Typo-offended

Typo-offended

»Do You by any chance remember: In which font did you scream?«
Cartoons that make somebody angry

Cartoons that make somebody angry

14. JAN 2015 // illustration
The massacre on Charlie Hebdo is still all too present to talk about something as easy as to make somebody angry. Oh dear. But that’s a part of the theme of the documentary Cartoonists : Satire cartoons has to piss somebody off.
Yes to the saying-no-hat

Yes to the saying-no-hat

23. SEP 2014 // illustration
The Danish Psychology Professor Svend Brinkmann wants the saying-no-hat back, he says in the book Stå fast – et opgør med tidens udviklingstvang (Stand firm - a showdown with the development coercion). He recommends to focus a more on the negative in your life, find the saying-no-hat and suppress the emotions. We need input from […]
We are all numbers

We are all numbers

13. DEC 2013 // illustration
I try to ignore it. I’m turning into numbers. One by one. Meanwhile words become opinion, twisted to new, separated to pieces, in sudden beauty or occasionally despair. Temporarily. Numbers on the other hand are rocks. That get shaken when dressed up in words, in interpretation. Yet two is still two. Words loose the origin.
I […]