These images are rough cuts from a new project I am working on. Most of the project is shot on film, but as I am still traveling and working, none of it has been processed yet. I also shoot digitally along the way, just to be safe, and the images above are (some fresh and new) examples of that work.

The project itself is a collaboration with my childhood friend from boarding school, Vibeke Bidstrup. She works as a pastor in the lutheran church of Denmark, more specifically Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen. We also live together at the rectory. For a long time, we have been planning to work on a project together, mostly because it would be fun but also because it could be interesting, our very different backgrounds considered.

To sum the project up very (extremely) briefly, it is about the concept and understanding of freedom, in- and outside of religion and its institutions. We are traveling the Baltic countries, visiting sites of interest and meeting different people along the way for informal interviews. Political activists, a catholic priest, a new age life-coach, a teenager, a journalist, a vice president, a psychologist etc.They talk about their lives and their ideas of freedom while we listen and learn. I take pictures along the way, and once we return home we will start working on a book of photographic essays by me, combined with text by Vibeke.

The inspiration for the project, and our approach to it, stems from modern readings of Old Testament texts relating to the subject of freedom. An example would be Genesis, in which Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, learn to tell the difference between good and bad and are kicked out of The Garden of Eden as a consequence. This could be read as a tale of growing up and becoming aware of your actions and their consequences. You become responsible. God then punishes them. Eve has to bear children and give birth in pain, while Adam has to work hard to provide for his family. Thus, they are no longer living in ignorant bliss but their lives now have a purpose and, perhaps, meaning.

This balance between freedom, responsibility and meaning is what our project is about. When do we, as humans, feel free and where – and to whom – do we look for meaning and purpose.

For me it has been very interesting to work on a collaborative project with someone so different from myself, and from outside the art world. The subject of religion is new to me and so is my approach, which means that the work I end up making also looks very different from what I have previously done. It has been a nice break from my self-centred personal practice. Tomorrow we are going home, and I cannot wait to get to processing and scanning all the work I have been doing the past month. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures above.

This was my last entry as a guest-blogger. Thank you for having me, Der Greif.

//Birk Thomassen

The pictures above are from the first project I ever did, before I started studying photography in art school. Unlike the work I do now, which is mostly shot on film, back then I only shot digital. I was afraid of the intimacy that occurs when photographing people so I would turn to plants and flowers and mostly go out at night with my camera. I am posting this to show that even though my work and aesthetic has changed a lot, I believe that even back then I was still looking for the same things, just in other places and without really being aware. Sex and beauty. This artist, I forget his name, once said during an artist talk I attended that all artists really only have one story to tell and we keep telling it over and over in different ways. It sounds terrifying but I enjoy this idea.

I keep a lot of plants at home and botanics and gardening is my thing next to photography. I find it extremely satisfying and inspiring, planting seeds and watching things grow. Same as with art, there is an element of creation here that is very important to me in everything I do.

Below I have included included the trailer for a BBC documentary about plants, featuring my hero, David Attenborough (the emperor of The UK). It features a lot of time lapse footage of flowers unfolding and vines twining. Very arousing, yet soothing. I often watch this before I go to sleep.

Instead of dedicating this entry to a specific artist or writer, I have chosen to write about a guilty pleasure of mine: Coming of age-themed movies and shows. This genre has always fascinated me; when I was growing up myself and now, as an adult. Growing up, experiencing everything for the first time, all the ups and downs seem larger than life. Vivid and saturated. I like to put my nostalgia goggles on and look back at this time, or visit it through books and movies.

My own teenage years were not particularly interesting. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, felt different and isolated, and spent a lot of my time escaping through books and music. At first I did not really have a filter. I read every book on the shelf and was desperate enough to read the whole “Little House on The Prairie” series. Twice. Then I got in touch with other bored teenagers online who would recommend new books and music to me. Many sleepless nights were spent in front of my stationary computer in the basement, reading about the (more interesting) lives of others. In the city, in love, with superpowers.

The list below could go on forever, but I will try to list some of the shows and movies I think have shaped me and my work. I will leave the books out to make it short. Here are some of the teenage dramas that make me melt with nostalgia and wish I were a 17 year old boy in love, instead of a 30 year old man on a working trip in Estonia, on a bus full of smelly old people.

TV-shows:

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997) (Quite possibly the best tv-show ever made. Willow!)

Queer as Folk (1999)

Sabrina The Teenage Witch. (1996) (yes)

SKAM (2015)

Movies:

The first X-men film (2000) (Teenagers struggling to come to terms with secret superpowers. Metaphor much?)

Thelma (2017)

Beautiful Thing (1996)

North Sea Texas (2011)

Jongens (2014)

Come Undone (2000)

Wild Reeds (1994)

Being 17 (2016)

Criminal Lovers (1999)

Call Me By Your Name (2017 film)

God’s Own Country (2017)

Again, this post is not really about photography. I guess some of the following ones will not be either so sorry in advance, I guess. While I love photography and spend a lot of time working on, looking at and talking about it, I will dedicate these blog entries to the things that have inspired and informed my work. Where I think it comes from.

So, meet Dennis Cooper. One of my favourite writers. I first stumbled upon his work in the 10th grade, I think. I was just hanging around at the local library and I saw this book with a cover that had two boys kissing on it. Jackpot. Except they were painted like clowns and covered in blood. I read the book anyway and it made a huge impact on me. Today I barely even remember what it was about but I vividly remember how it made me feel. Reading Cooper’s work can be a real challenge. Though often short and fast-paced, his novels are not exactly page-turners. One time, I was on a plane reading his 1991 novel, Frisk, and I had to put the book away for fear of throwing up. There is a lot of violence, shit, blood and gore in there. Young, pale teenage boys dying in all sorts of horrible ways. Still, somehow, there are glimpses of humour and tenderness there as well.

Like in his novel The Sluts, where a webmaster shuts down a discussion thread on an escort review website, due to it being too graphic and discussing the murder of an escort in detail. The users then defect to continue the discussion in a thread dedicated to fantasies involving the murder and torture of Nick Carter (of The Backstreet Boys). A whole page of terribly detailed murder fantasies. So bad it’s good.

Maybe you can compare his books to horror movies. You do not want to look but you cannot help it. You want to turn the page because you want to know what is going to happen, but you do not want anybody to die. Still, you turn the page and someone dies.

I have read most of his work but here I will list my three favourites plus synopses:

1. The Sluts (2004)

“Set largely on the pages of a website where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, emails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort’s date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth. Explicit, shocking, comical, and displaying the author’s signature flair for blending structural complexity with direct, stylish, accessible language, The Sluts is Cooper’s most transgressive novel since Frisk, and one of his most innovative works of fiction to date.”

1. My Loose Thread (2003)

“Dennis Cooper’s latest novel has emerged as his finest, most thought-provoking and challenging piece of writing yet. At the heart of the work is Larry, a teenager who is struggling to understand not only his sexuality and physical feelings toward his younger brother but also the purpose and reason behind his own existence. Larry is offered $500 to kill a fellow pupil and retrieve the boy’s notebook. It all seems straightforward enough. However, once Larry ventures into the notebook, complications arise. Captivated by both the beauty of its articulation and the horror of its content, he longs for such an ability to communicate himself. Written in sparse yet concentrated language that surrounds, submerges, and potentially overwhelms the reader, My Loose thread is a claustrophobic, harrowing, and intensely moving piece of fiction.”

1. Frisk (1991)

“Possessed by the mystery of a series of fake snuff photographs he was shown as a teenager, Dennis, the narrator of ‘Frisk’, lives in a world where the rules of attraction have become a treasure hunt, and love is only a matching of images and body parts. In Holland, in a room in a windmill above a brewery, Dennis is freed from the need to respect feelings; the unimaginable becomes an idea, and the idea a reality.”

My first blog entry I will dedicate to the work of my favourite director, Gregg Araki. Especially his masterpiece, The Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy, consisting of the films:

Totally Fucked Up (1993)

The Doom Generation (1995)

Nowhere (1997)

All three films are gems and The Doom Generation might be the closest thing I get to having a favourite film. These films have it all: Beautiful cinematography, amazing 90s shoe gaze soundtrack, teenage angst, bisexual pissed off emos before emo was even a thing, Rose McGowan and of course aliens. Shannen Doherty even makes a brief cameo in which she gets obliterated by a laser gun. What’s not to like.

When I was a teenager suffocating in the Danish countryside, this is exactly how I wished my life looked like and had I somehow managed to find these films back then, I would have been hopelessly in love with all the characters in them.