Species of non-spaces
'The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes,' Marcel Proust
Impressions from early childhood are hard to part with, more so if they arrive at crucial turning points in our lives - and though we may have long ago moved on from place and time, we visit and revisit our memories to dig for clues as to their meaning. Swedish artist JH Engström (b. 1969, lives and works in Southern Sweden and Stockholm) has produced a new series of photographs inspired by such a quest. 'CDG', a group of gorgeous, uncanny images taken at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and currently showing at Milliken in Stockholm (to 20 Jan 2007), is a study of personal soul-searching, as much as it is a unique document of something public and familiar taken as though borrowing one or two cosmic lenses able to capture time's palpable, erosive effect on reality - the transience of all things. Old chairs, graying runways, the light bleeding in until even the faintest remaining rock disappears - welcome to a vision of travel that looks more liminal, sci-fi afterlife than that found in glossy CondeNast titles.
Those familiar with Engström's highly idiosyncratic, personal photobook style will recognize the hazy, partially washed out physical and thematic tenor of the photographs. In earlier series, slightly distant images of such deserted spaces were often juxtaposed with bright, highly detailed still life close ups and unusually candid portraits of friends and of the photographer himself, often shown in galleries in a non-hierarchic dynamic jumble of styles and subjects, all equal pieces of the larger puzzle - in a subtle way, providing a graphic answer to the elusive, rhetorical question, 'why photograph?' This series is at once more discreet, less pop, more narrative and still a unique meditation on mortality. By narrowing into one particular topic and trekking it to focus on the nature of memory and spatiality, the artist is tapping into new depths, whilst keeping the intimacy and immediacy that have garnered him recognition and awards, such as being shortlisted for the Deustche Börse Photography Prize in 2005, and the recent publication of several books by Steidl.
All images, from 'CDG', copyright JH Engström, courtesy the artist.
When asked about the series' genesis, Engström discusses a very early inspiration. 'At the age of ten I moved from the Swedish countryside to Paris with my parents, and the first thing I saw, was the Charles de Gaulle Airport. As a teenager I travelled a lot between Paris and Sweden and therefore spent a lot of time at CDG. I was fascinated already then. The whole environment, the ambiance.. It's really a fascinating airport. Like a fantasy landscape.'
The project was commissioned by Agence VU, a fact that facilitated obtaining all the necessary permissions the artist needed to be able to move around CDG and photograph it, despite the current climate of distrust and high-security at airports around the globe. Almost like a passport to non-space: 'Without those papers the project would have been impossible', Engström explains. His fascination with observing presence and absence, in observing a personal, lonely experience of the world, is articulated through these faded, almost post-apocalyptic stills, where little but shards and disappearing walls appear to remain, only a fading memory, one that's beginning to form the elements of a new fiction.
'CDG is connected to a big part of my past, and also came to signify big changes in my life as a kid. But what made this project interesting as well is how the world, and maybe especially airports, changed after 9/11. They are no longer what they used to be. Before, they tended to represent freedom, possibilities, openness. Now, they have come to be a place where fear is very strongly present. The control, the security. I think airports are the places where you obviously can see the changes after 9/11. Except for the actual war zones of course. Besides that, airports always have been emotionally charged. People meet, they separate there. And CDG is also a border to Europe and the EU. A lot of immigrants get their future decided there.'
Perhaps Engström's future was too, as after a few years in Paris, he moved back to Sweden, eventually studying photography in Gothenburg University and relocating to Paris in order to become an assistant to fashion photographer Mario Testino and, later, to documentary photographer Anders Petersen in Stockholm, about whom he made a film. Engström's early projects, such as 'Shelter', made at a homeless women's charity over a period of three years, are highly personal yet committed to reflecting social conditions not perceptible by the naked eye. Years on, his angle certainly retains a similar commitment and political involvement - the artist is currently at work on his third documentary film, on a social welfare office in Sweden.
Something that struck me about this series, as others, by the artist, is the notion of editing, and the thought that goes behind assembling bookends for a visual project that could perhaps go on for longer, even indefinitely. In this instance, the answer is clear: 'When the permission ran out I had to be done. I spent three intense weeks out there, sleeping at an airport hotel. A very special experience.' But what about other projects, and how do they end up getting shaped? 'I take photographs out of necessity. That just happens,' the artist states, spelling out a manifesto he makes seem effortless. 'That part of it is not difficult or especially a big effort. The most difficult and important part in the process is the editing. Time and intuition are two almost abstract tools that I think are very important to me. To have the courage to trust these tools is the tricky part.'
Engström is adamant about approaching photography with a slightly stochastic aesthetic. 'I use very different methods when I photograph. For me there is no hierarchy between a snapshot, taken with a throwaway camera, and a well planned staged 4x5 photograph. As long as the result speaks to me, and goes with the feelings and thought I want to express, wonderful!'
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez is a writer/editor based in London and Madrid.
jhengstrom.com
JH ENGSTROM, 'CDG'
To 20 Jan 2007
Milliken
Stockholm
The Charles de Gaulle project will be published in the fall of 2007 with the title 'CDG / JHE'; the third part in Engström's trilogy that began with 'Trying to Dance' and 'Haunts', entitled 'Wells', will be completed and published in the fall of 2008, both by Steidl.
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