JLSchou: “My photographs are neither documentation nor botany, it is completely irrelevant what the Latin names of trees and shrubs are, just as animals and people are only present through the trampled paths and other traces left behind.
All photographs are taken in natural daylight, and I hope with this neutrality to make room for the viewer’s own empathy, so that they can take in this jumble of colors, lines and resolutions quite unfiltered. The camera is digital, but there is no manipulation in Photoshop, and we are far away from the conventional beautifications.Throughout my photographic practice, I have related to the landscape and to the photographer’s mediation of it. A significant feature of my photography is a desire for a ”democratization”; of the image - both as the photographer W. Eggleston uses the term in ”the Democratic Forest”, and as I interpret it. In a ”democratic” photographic vision, all elements have equal value, and a boring car park can be just as ”photogenic” as the most beautiful patch of forest. In this series ”Off Road” I try with simple techniques to make tangled branches, leaves, trunks and foliage fall into place in chaotic, non-hierarchical, yet harmonious compositions.The photographs are thus an invitation to let your gaze wander.”