A video visit to All We Have Is Now with artist Erik Johansson
#1 All We have is Now
It's so easy to think about the future and think about the past. And this image really defines the title of the exhibition as well, which is all we have is now to hold on to what you have in the moment and appreciate what we have, no matter what's going on around us. That sometimes is good just to stop, to kind of like think about what we have right here, right now. And even though they're holding on, they're kind of melting away as well. So there is a little bit sadness to it in a way that even though we try to appreciate the moment, the moment is something that is going away from us as well, because it's kind of moving with the time and everything start to become the past. Eventually. But I wanted to try to capture the beauty of the moment and like to actually hold on to each other and to really appreciate what we have right now, even if it's something that feels like the second can last forever, it will be gone forever in a moment as well.
#2 DEADLINE
This one is called Deadline and I got the idea when I was actually at the swimming hall, I was swimming laps, and I was looking at the clock on the wall, and I was thinking how the like you have to go faster and faster. You have the clock on the wall. And the sun was setting outside the window. So that's how I kind of came up with the idea of, like, the clock and the sun and, the water kind of rising the same way that, like, I was swimming in the water there. For this image, I really wanted to try to capture as much as possible on location because I want to do a reflection from the water and man sitting there to really feel like he was there on location. So I put together a kit of a desk with some different desk props and brought it out to a big lake in Sweden, where I photographed it. And in order to make it look like there was a clock, that was kind of like sun in the water, I bought a big, white umbrella or parasol that I put in the water with a flash attached to it. So it would also give a little bit of light on the man. but one thing I didn't expect that I noticed when I was photographing it was that it became a reflection of, of the pole of the light basically down in the water underneath the clock. And, this was something I didn't really expect. And when I was filming it, it was kind of something that was hard to remove somehow. But I realized that actually, what if the clock is, instead of it being five minutes to midnight, maybe it can be that the time is just about like, the minute hand is just at the bottom, and it's kind of can be a reflection of the minute hand as stand in the water. So sometimes unexpected things happen on location when you're shooting. That was a little bit of a challenge, but I kind of used it to my advantage because it actually became a nice way to create a reflection of the clock itself.
#3 Decoration
Decoration is about capturing the moment as well, in a way, Basically I was thinking about the absurd fact of how we are cutting flowers and putting them in a vase, which is basically supposed to be something pretty, but you basically kill the flowers and put them in a vase to just slowly die somehow. So I wanted to also capture this in an animation way that like I actually filmed the flowers over two weeks period, creating a time lapse of them standing inside a model house that I built as well. And then combine that with the with the setting that I photographed on location. I think it's kind of like supposed to show the change of beauty in a way, and how it dissolves into nothing.
#4 DISCONNECTING
This one is called Disconnecting. And, it's about what we all can relate to that we all have this, that we get more and more sucked into our phones, and, I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else. I would say that we spend hours every day on the, on the phone, and it almost becomes like a digital prison in a way that we feel addicted to it. And these feeds and things going on, that is never ending. And I wanted to try to capture this in a way, a person frozen in time, where you just have this, all this information flowing by. So I photographed this, a couple of years ago in Sweden in a big quarry, and, I used a projector in the night, with actually a mannequin, because I wanted the person to be completely frozen and not move at all. So, it was a little bit, technical to get the angle and everything, right, and the exposure, because the night was getting darker, I needed still some ambient light from the environment. But at a certain point, I found the perfect balance between the person standing there and the projection on the wall. The reason why, why I place it in nature was mainly because I wanted it to feel. I wanted the contrast between the digital world and the real world somehow. And I don't always like to work with cities because cities are very recognizable locations that you have architecture and buildings and things designed by someone, and nature is just nature, right? So I wanted to create a place that's I wanted a flat wall. So you would see the projection pretty clearly. And that, to me, became a mountainside. Felt like a quite natural place somehow. And the contrast between the created digital world and the nature, I thought was a nice clash between places, even though it might be an odd place for a person to stand in the middle of nowhere. I think it helps for a story. And, and, the contrast between the digital world that we create and the nature that has always existed.
#5 HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
This image is called Head in the Clouds and it's about creativity and imagination. I had this idea, for quite a long time, and the moment that I come up with an idea is usually really hard to define. But it's like I start thinking about something and then the thoughts just keep on going, kind of. And I wanted to capture that in some way. And the idea here was, that a person is standing in a field and then you have like the mind is almost like floating away, almost as if it's water somehow. What I wanted to kind of do this was to capture the idea of like it floating almost like a reflection of water, because it's reflected, the mind is reflected of the environment and the thoughts of things that you see around you. What I ended up doing was to dress up a mannequin, in the same clothes that you see the person standing there. And I turned it upside down in water to really get the realistic reflection of the mannequin in the water. And then I could combine that with the photo of the man in the field and, and create this movement of the mind floating away.
#6 RIVER HOTEL
This one is called River hotel. And, it's about, in one way, to me, it's about the environmental change of the world and how kind of like places that maybe used to be a Riverside Hotel became a river hotel. But it's also about this mother coming with her two children. And how will they actually get there? You can see a little boat, and it looks like a quite dangerous journey to get to the other side. And what do you think will happen? Will they try to get there, or they just try to find another way or what will they actually do?
As for the technical part of it, I photographed, the river was actually like one of the biggest waterfalls in Sweden. And the hotel is photographed in Prague at a different location. And the people were also photographed separately because I wasn't able to kind of have it all at one place. But I try to capture as much as I can. And then I added the other elements that I needed in there as well.