“We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.”
John F. Kennedy
For my latest project, I decided to work on the juxtaposition between history and modernity symbolised by the human in the landscape.
I looked at paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, a German painter of the 18th and 19th century, who used to show a romantic portrait of man and nature in harmony. The landscape was often the main subject of his paintings rather than the humans.
First I considered photographing contemporary people in an unspoiled landscape, but then turned the project around when I had the chance to witness some living history.
I recently spent a weekend in Dorset near Corfe Castle visiting a Saxon and Viking re-enactment event.
It is amazing how very dedicated to authenticity the modern Saxons and Vikings are. They train very hard to learn the proper historic way of fighting with a sword, ax, spear and shield, and only wear handmade outfits. They live in authentic camps during their re-enactment weekends, where it is frowned upon to have anything modern. They sleep on sheepskins, have no running water, use only handmade crockery and try to be historically correct up to the smallest detail.
I was extremely lucky to be allowed to stay in the castle with my camera after the public had left. It was interesting to see that the modern Vikings and Saxons don’t suddenly stop being authentic when the opening hours finish, but enjoy having a real castle to live and practice fighting in when they are amongst themselves. I stayed until late at night to watch and photograph the camp life.
I still wanted to portrait the human in the landscape but had changed my idea to Saxons and Vikings in contrast to the modern world.
As I live in London, I decided to find out where Saxon settlements would have been around 1000 years ago, and found that basically, a large part of the City of London is built on top of old Saxon settlements, and it was relatively easy to find the right area.
I set out towards the streets around today’s Monument underground station and photographed places where the Saxons would have lived. Today this area is dominated by banks, big financial corporations and massive statement high-rise buildings like the “Shard” or the “Walkie Talkie Building”.
I wanted to show the historic characters, that I had photographed in Dorset, in their geographically correct London environment but with the surroundings and architecture as they are today, as if they had travelled in time. I used the two sets of images and joined them together in Photoshop to create my photo set Urban Warriors.
I found it really important to show the historic warrior characters in exactly the same spots where their ‘forefathers’ would have walked the streets 1000 years before. The fact that these places are now dominated by big finance corporations and imposing showy high-rise buildings gives an extra edge to the subject, I find.
These days a human in London is not dwarfed by majestic landscapes anymore but by banking towers and inhuman architecture.
Through My Eyes 