[Photographie] Les fantômes hivernaux de Kjetil Karlsen

We discovered the work of Norwegian photographer Kjetil Karlsen through the cover art for Iterum Nata's From the Infinite Light (which we mentioned in our review). As luck would have it, around the same time Karlsen released Watching the Silence, an evocatively titled debut book showcasing his work, which you can purchase through Skeleton Press.

Karlsen photographs nature in northern Norway, but his images cannot really be described as landscapes. When he photographs people, we would not call them portraits either. Transcribing reality is not the subject, even though everything is done in natural light. Very quickly, his work evokes a dreamlike wandering through unreal, poetic, and melancholic visions. We are captivated by the photographer's mysterious frames, where the sky is a wintery gray-white against which bare trees and other strange silhouettes stand out. When humans are present, they are either fantastical faceless silhouettes with undefined contours or they just seem tiny, as if crushed by the immensity of the landscape.

While the current trend is toward ultra-sharpness and over-definition of images, Karlsen's work strikes us with its texture, grainy, blurred... spectral, in fact. We are plunged into a fog of shades of gray that is not afraid of darkness, within which we can make out a few visions from another reality. Karlsen approaches photography not only as an art of composition but also as the working of the image as a very concrete material. Timeless, his photographs evoke the spirit photography of the early 20th century, with its ghosts that the film tries to freeze.

He often opts for a square format. In addition to reinforcing the impression of seeing an image from another era, reminiscent of the early days of cinema, this approach focuses our attention on the subject, enclosing it in a smaller space and encouraging centered or symmetrical compositions. We then discover images with iconic power inspired by nature, cold, mysticism... By not seeking to immortalize the reality of a present moment, Karlsen breaks free from time to offer us timeless visions of striking beauty. It's no surprise that his work is associated with the musical worlds we hold dear, including Witch Club Satan and Dawn of a Dark Age, who have called on his powerful imagery to illustrate their work this year. To get through winter or dream of winter, we highly recommend Watching the Silence, or, more generally, following his work on his Instagram or Facebook page. Photographs are ghosts, echoes frozen for eternity, and Karlsen is a fascinating medium!