hellerup

(back to our regularly scheduled blogging)

if i were to function after the lubrication for the entry i would need some coffee. in truth i am not sure if it was the beers or the second hand smoke. luckily the hotel caters to the north american penchant for all you can eat breakfasts, i could think of no better way to soak up the tuborgs. soft boiled eggs, cereal, freshly baked loaf bread, i tend to stuff myself on the breads for breakfast - and gallons of coffee alternating with orange and apple juices.

it was moving out day and at nine first claus then bent showed, having eaten we were banned from the cafeteria even to sit so we had to sit in the waiting room so much open spaced stocked me after my cell upstairs.

naturally we headed out for coffee and and what made copenhagen so nice for morning photographic wanders made it hellish for the peckish. nothing was open. seems like there should be a law that when the last prostitute of the evening calls it a night the cafés should open. we passed good morning vietnam which we found ironic for unless they were on saigon time, they were horriblly misnamed. there was a tea shop with people queuing up awaiting its opening. we did the walk that i started the day with the day before this time with commentary as claus had lived in the neighbourhood before and left due to the needles in the courtyard etc. found this hard to believe now as i am sure that all those audi drivers would certainly complain from the risk of those needles puncturing their tyres.

finally found a café in vesterbro, more finally as it seems neither of them are used to walking with people who make snaps - bent later said that it is like walking your dog except he doesn’t pee all the time - as i would be doing my usual running to catch up. don’t know what the problem was as danish pavements aren’t really suitable for walking even two abreast with three one of us was being pushed into the bike lane.

coffee was ordered in danish but the again in english as the server had problems with the language - morganmad, brøt etc. i think that they were looking for a more traditional breakfast but this place had instead of great breads and pastries - there was one pathetic looking display of some brownish cake - they served pancakes.

 

in the machine over to claus’s place to pick up the snaps passing what looked like a real camera shop, thought i saw things that used film but the machine doors were locked and i couldn’t get out - before heading up the hellerup.

this was that clean upwardly mobile part of  greater denmark. at the end of the block from the gallery i could see the north sea and wanted to head down to see if i could catch a glimpse of sweden.

the day dedicated to the hanging of the show, images placed around the gallery, i did send a lot more than was needed which i had planned but in my fear of not having enough to edit sent quite a bit more than i had thought which made the editing a bit difficult as there images that i really wanted to but didn’t really fit. 

this also confirmed my feelings that i like books better, this should look nice but i was getting distracted, was glad there were window sills and and thought of what book would go together.

not soon after we arrived the gallery assistant came in and in the spirit of the country she was korean. while i edited she hung, bent went out for croissants and coffee.

i headed into a camera shop that had potential as finally the smell of smoke was being replaced with chemical odour. they must melt down the digital cameras though as there was nothing that hinted of film in the shop. thought that maybe they used the darkroom smell as a way calming older photographers the way one bakes bread when one sells a house.

broke for lunch eun-jin and bent a head as i am making snaps. we headed toward the sushi restaurant where we were greeted in english told the specials in english and just about everything else was in english. 

one of the servers seemed relieved after she asked bent so you’re danish right? in danish.

stopped to read the announcements in the press.

one of the pluses in the hanging process is seeing how others see your work. there was this to-ing and fro-ing about what was going on not so much - yet - in what should be shown but in who should do the editing. there was this idea that i had a clue when i really didn’t and that since i had personal information on the work that my hanging would be better. where i said that i like to see what others think when they come to it and that in sequencing nothing was fixed for as soon as i turn away and look at the arrangement again i’ll be wondering what i was thinking.

but underneath this i know that i have to sequence the work as it is seen as desolate. i should say that the black and white is seen that way the colour triptychs - they were quite sure. there is this that people-less means desolate even as i was trying to show that post boxes mean someone is expecting mail, doors open hint as someone being in etc. so the wall was choreographed to counter the feeling of desolation. 

the colour in their opinion were more like postcards, i cannot tell if they were looked at as triptychs or as three snaps on the same paper. i have a suspicion that they are seen that way due to their size 50x20 cm. if they were bigger? they do get a bit lost in the gallery which has a low ceiling. using the usual writing analogy i saw the triptychs as chapters/verses in a whole and thus had to be separate, some wondered why they couldn’t be placed end to end to make a continuous line. because the only place for run on sentences is here in the blog.

i can see why students can be frustrated as when people venture opinions without backup there is nothing to base that opinion on. here there was the hint of the idea of the desolate and sad which is not what i want at all. i also from “reading” a blurb in one of the papers - had to combat the idea of “american” photographers as the road trip was brought up again with the sad and desolate. i (hope that i) am addressing the fact that while underpopulated that there is a life happening here and that it goes on quite well despite the situations. wrote for one of my many attempts at the residency in gros morne  that the tragedy of newfoundland was that people saw it tragically. i don’t.

right now i have to fight this idea that a closed immaculately painted  band shell in ferryland isn’t sad but is awaiting summer as they want to hang it on a wall by itself to heighten the sadness. this couldn’t happen in a book.

i like the black and white equally and think they counter each other well but here the black and white is preferred to which one wall of colour was replaced by black and white. i am guessing that it is due to the black and white’s feeling of craft and thus hinting that the person making them isn’t just running off to the photofinishers. it is the reason that at the society for apathetic institutionalised creativity there is such a suspicion for chemical based work.

it was determined that we wouldn’t finish hanging to-day much to the consternation of eun-jin and that we would finish to-morrow before the opening.