„The dark oceans were the whombs for life: from the protecting oceans life emerged. We still
bear in our bodies - in our blood, in the salty bitterness of our tears - the marks of this remote
past. (...)“
United Nations Gerneral Assembly,1967, Arvid Pardo, Maltese UN Ambassador
I lay out photographic paper on these deserted beaches and uninhabited islands of Spitsbergen because I don't want to point my camera at the landscape to document, to limit, to tame.
I aim to enable a collective photographic drawing of what is there, of an embrace of seaweed and the broken out piece of a plastic crate, bird egg shells and rusty nails, perhaps remnants of trapper's huts. Then I leave it in the arctic sun for hours and let the drawing, the imprint pass.
Like a self-print of this rather involuntary encounter: outlines emerge, sea water wet algae clings to the photographic paper, traces, cracks and shapes of the plastic fragments are reflected, silver gelatine emulsion reacts with algae, salt water, plastic, partly agitated by the wind.