ALL THE THINGS THAT PEOPLE DO IN WINTER, THEY ALL MELT DOWN IN SUMMER

Úlfur, colored analog black and white photograph in three layers, June 2009, Reykjavík

Chapter 9: YOU ARE FREE

It's been a while again. And I know almost everyone starts goddamn blog entries like this, but I am just like everybody else. Lots of things happened, or it least it feels to me like that. I've been busy with my exhibition. Browsing through my folders, selecting photographs, scanning, buying print paper, printing, buying frames, cleaning frames, framing, painting the gallery in a new fresh white again, thinking, rethinking, organizing photographs on walls, and rethinking it all over again, montaging the photographs, doing the math for it, and all that stuff. It's lots of work if you have to do it all yourself. And it felt good doing it all myself. And at the end looking at the show and more or less being happy with it. The exhibition is ending this week. It's been an interesting month. Interesting people dropped by, and I hope they enjoyed it more than they did not. (All prints are for sale, by the way, if someone reading this is interested?)




It's been a time without even holding a camera in my hands which felt so weird because I was so busy this summer photographing. I am back to that. Working on new projects and portraits.



Mary Ellen Mark was in town. She was holding a lecture and showing photographs of Exposure (Phaidon Press, first published in 2005), Seen Behind The Scene (Phaidon Press, 2008) and her project Prom. We were also honoured to see the yet-unreleased short film Mark's husband Martin Bell directed about the Prom project. It shows interviews with the teenagers Mark photographed with an 20x24 Polaroid camera. The film is really moving. The project will eventually, so Mark, be presented as a book (including the film on DVD) and an exhibition.




I had the chance to meet her and to have 30 minutes of her time to take her portrait. I was so nervous. But thank God, she is not only a great photographer, she is also a great and kind person. I felt so honoured.