Touching

Ce que dit l'éditeur

I don't know who made all these different sculptures, I don't remember where exactly I found each one. I didn't take any notes.

I do know the first time was at a Rodin and the art of ancient Greece exhibition at the British Museum in 2018. I shot two rolls in the exhibition. One in colour and one in black and white. And then I went home and put the exposed rolls back in my camera and shot them again against my body in the living room.

I was looking to be surprised. I wanted it to blend and merge in ways I couldn't have thought of myself. I wanted to not know for sure when they ended and I began.

Most of the photos were as you can expect when one shoots like this - not very good. But sometimes something would happen that fascinated me deeply. Enough times and deeply enough for me to be curious to continue.

I took the train to Paris to see more of Rodin in 2019. I found desire, discomfort and something fragile in his sculptures. Even if I hadn't known that I would add my own body on top of the photos it would have been an absolute pleasure to photograph his work. It was an absolute pleasure. I forgot that I was going to add anything on top of what I was already doing. I dreamt of working with my hands and clay. I had tea in the café in the garden. I thought of my lover and sent him photos of the most erotic angles taken with my phone.

I didn't stop with Rodin. I went to Musée d'Orsay, the Louvre, Atelier Brancusi, Musée Bourdelle and l'Orangerie.

I was looking at most of the sculptures for the first time even though I had lived in Paris in the past, because truth is that sculptures had never been something that interested me much before this. I had always headed straight to the paintings in most museums. Or the photographs - when they had any. There were so many sculptures to see in Paris. So much to discover.

In the café in the Louvre I wrote in my notebook : « Much too many people. Much too hard to find my way. Have I seen all the statues ? I don't think so. Think I still have the French ones left. Maybe I will return on Monday. Maybe I will go to Musée d'Orsay tomorrow' and not today. It's easy to get overw helmed. Do I have the energy to see Orsay today ? No, I absolutely do not. But I could do Orsay early tomorrow if I can get out of bed. The queues might be less insane then. I also do want to see the waterlilies. I could do that today. And possibly return here on Monday. I do have a much better overview of Musée d'Orsay and Rodin. Sigh. What a journey. But I am here now. »

Reading those lines again now, two years later on my sofa in London as I wirite these words, I absolutely understand why there was no desire to retain names of artworks on that trip. I was moving much too fast with too little time. Catching limbs and fragments, beauty and sex, breasts and penises, clay and stone - in crowds of people.

I do wish to return now and discover them again with other eyes and intentions. More rested. Less feverish.

This wasn't about looking anyway. It was about looking and making at the same time. Looking and taking. Looking and transforming. The things I looked for are the things I look for in my own work.

I want to write something about Paris and my trip here. I don't know why. Maybe because I want to give glimpses to things that are not in the works, but inevitably were part of them being made so might be somewhere in there anyway. Or maybe I don't feel fully comfortable writing about the works. Or maybe it is because my favourite things are always people telling me personal things. I don't want to read the theory behind someone's artwork. I don't want the artwork to need words to be explained. I don't like works that I can't feel. I don't like to read about art. I do sometimes like to read about the artist and what they had for breakfast and what their routine was and how they fell in love. This is why I never wrote a text to one of my books before and why this is the first time I try. I thought I had to do it in a more traditional way describing the concept and thoughts behind the work. And I always wanted the images to have their own voices. But this time I wanted to try. Why not try to do it the way I do my work ?

Softly, intuitively, feeling, touching, playing, opening.

I stayed in a hotel south of the river with red wall paper and I walked to all the museums with my backpack full of films and I didn't take time to do much else. The whole trip was a sort of fever that you can get into with a lack of time and while you are creating.

The second layer of the photographs took longer to achieve. For a long time, the rolls from Paris were just sitting in my closet and waiting to be brought out again. Weighing on me. I took one out here and there. The process similarly feverish and fast whenever I did. Body parts moving swiftly in front of the lens. Catching a nipple in the mirror. Bending over. Bending backw ards. Catching the soft skin under my feet. Hoping this will align with the first layer on the film.

Then forgetting about it. Bringing it out again months later. Doing a similar dance in front of the lens and the mirror.

Even though self-portraiture is such an integral part of my practice, I don't always like doing it. It challenges me. I can't see what I'm doing and I need to rely much more on intuition and feeling. I also don't always like what I see. The camera finds things the mirror hasn't told me about.

I feel vulnerable.

I am 40 now, but when l was in my mid-30s I decided I had to stop the self-portraits because the camera showed me that I was starting to look older, and I didn't like to see it. Later I decided I had to continue for that very reason.

Why have I taken so many photos of myself ?

Who have I taken them for ? Why have I shown these photos to people I don't know ? Is it healing or the opposite or neither ?

My first self-portrait was in the hallway mirror at age 10, dressed in a hat and sunglasses. I don't know where I got the idea from as I hadn't been exposed to that kind of photography at the time. I also took a photo of my friend sitting on the toilet and I hadn't been exposed to that kind of photography either. I don't know where ideas are born or when and why they stay with us.

My first nude self-portraits were taken as a rebellion. I was 20 years old. I had put on weight and was told I needed to lose it to continue to work as a model. As nobody else wanted to photograph my body I took off my clothes and pushed my stomach out to exaggerate the unwanted and photographed it myself. I also took photos of myself crying at the same time.

I don't let other people take pictures of me anymore unless its casual. I stopped saying yes to it as soon as it wasn't my job. People wanted to photograph me for portraits, for interviews, for fashion or their art, but I said no to almost everything. I didn't want to be part of their vision. I didn't like being directed. I regretted some of the things I had already done as a model. After so many years of being pliable, one day I woke up no longer able to move an inch for anyone else's vision.

I only wanted to be my own muse, my own material, my own truth. And even that is sometimes hard. I have to ask myself kindly. Or wait patiently for inspiration and desire to strike.

Not until late 2020 did I find the tranquillity to give the double exposures my full attention for longer periods of time and finish the self-portraits and second layer of the work.

That is also when I started with the momentous work of editing. So many interesting accidents had happened. But which ones are mine to put my name on ? Which ones are asking me to return to them over and over ? Which ones speak the clearest to each other ? And in which order do they wish to be told ? How long can I work with them before I grow blind to them ? Will I ever get as sensitive to them again as I was the first time I saw them ? How do I feel ? Am I ok to be this naked out in the world ? And...

Will you like it ? Will it touch you ?

I printed out my favourite photos and put them in a grid on the wall. I was not expecting the effect it had on me to happen, but seeing them all together fell almost religious or like stepping into the woods or a new land. I was moved. It had taken on a life and shape that felt bigger than and different from anything I had anticipated.

I had never seen anything like it.

I hadn't done a lot of double exposures before these. A couple of accidents on an old Polaroid camera. Some double exposures of my body and clouds and then bodies and flowers. But not many. This is a new way for me to work.

It's always a bit scary to show something that is very different from things I have shown before.
I want to get lost and grow and find new territory and do the unexpected, but it's a risk to not do what one already knows that one does well.

This text is similar to that in that I never did it before. I am finding new grounds. I don't know if they are solid, or if they will hold. But that is also how I felt when I started photography in the First place. I had no idea that what I was doing would be of any interest to someone else. All I knew was that I was compelled to explore it. And that my intuition was guiding me forward.

It's September 2021 now. I went to see the Rodin exhibition at the Tate yesterday. I was hoping to find something of value to include in this text. I read the wall texts and learnt about how he treated the women in his life and concluded that he was an arsehole. I didn't bring my camera and I also didn't miss it. My engagement with Rodin felt completed and like I was satiated.

I walked both there and home again. I thought about this text on my way back. I sat in a park for a bit to rest. I felt my feet getting heavier and heavier. As I got back to my home again I was ravenously hungry and in no mood to write anything at all.

The bodies in the sculptures start to look as one body after a while. It's different from the ideals of today, but it's still an ideal. The breasts are smaller. The hips are wider. They have little bellies. The penises are often small, and always flaccid. Sometimes missing. The bodies are almost always young and strong. Hairless. Spotless.

My body Feels messy next to them.

I never went to art school. I have not had any training in classical art. I don't think I have seen much more classical art than the average tourist. I don't know why I started to care now, but I have my suspicions.

My school was the Internet. That's where I had found all the art I was interested in. On Flickr and Tumblr. In the transition to Instagram I had lost some of that joy and curiosity. The work I loved the most could not be shared and found there. Things on there started to Feel calculated and curated with the intention of making money or fame rather than just sharing and exploring. I wasn't moved like I had been.

So, I went backwards in time. To see what I could find there at the root.

I went to find the naked body in the museums. With the desire to discover the art that mine was most likely built on, and had also rebelled against.

And then I tried to make it my own. To put my own hands on it. And touch it.
Lina Scfieynius, 2021