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My White Night

Scarlett Hooft Graafland

Introduction

In this issue of Photostory Weekly we focus on the story “My White Night” by Scarlett Hooft Graafland that received an Honorable Mention from the 2009 PhotoStory jury. Visual artist Graafland travels to isolated parts of the world to give her artistic response to different cultures and landscapes. During these long-term projects she stays with local people to research and adapts their daily lives. Being the art-director of her own concept-based series she uses performance, sculpture and photography to create surreal scenes. She ends up with visual attractive photographs that draw the attention to more profound topics such as generation gaps and climate change. Last year Graafland showed her images at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen. Viewbook invited photographer Lotte Stekelenburg to share her view on the series “My White Night”. Enjoy and feel free to react in the comments below.

Scarlett Hooft Graafland

Amsterdam, The Netherlands – Visual artist combining straight photographic practice with performance and sculpture to give an artistic response to landscapes and cultures of isolated parts of the world.  www.scarletthooftgraafland.com

In Context

The extensive landscape provides space for universal stories

By Lotte Stekelenburg

Dutch artist Scarlett Hooft Graafland is attracted by immense untouched landscapes, possibly because of her own origin. She is fascinated by places in the world where nature still seems in control and inhabitants have to live by the weather circumstances. The Inuit settlement of Igloolik, Nunavut, Canada is such a natural place where Graafland created her series “My White Night” during a four months stay.

The white environment of the polar plain invited Graafland to add colour. For the work “Lemonade Igloo” she produced big blocks of frozen orange lemonade and asked traditional Inuit men to build an igloo. On the final photograph the orange igloo shows a great contrast in colour with the blue sky. Graafland her images are very strong for colour and composition. Her surreal landscapes with unexpected man-made elements are not only an attraction to the eye, but also discuss several cultural subjects. “Lemonade Igloo” is about nowadays Westernization of the younger generation of Igloolik that mainly drinks lemonade and watches television, while the older generation still survives the arctic in a traditional way.

The extensive landscapes that create the context for Graafand her performances and sculptures show a lack of detail. This makes the photographs of Graafland extremely powerful; visually but also for subject matter. Without detailed information it seems easier to translate a specific story like the one of Igloolik, into a universal one. The space in the landscape provides space for the viewer to make it’s own interpretation.

LOTTE STEKELENBURG

Lotte Stekelenburg is a freelance photographer based in Rotterdam. She works on her own artistic projects and she photographs in commission for a variety of clients especially in the art and cultural scene. She studied at the art academy and also finished the more contemplative Master Photographic Studies. Besides photographing she’s up to different activities within her discipline, like teaching and writing on photography. www.lottestekelenburg.nl


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CREATION - ABOUT THE IDEA AND PROCESS

"In extreme circumstances many ideas emerge on site."

It all starts with acquiring knowledge on the unfamiliar cultures and landscapes Graafland plans to visit. To realise her projects she stays in particular areas for several months and adapts the culture of its inhabitants. Her contact with local people is a very important part of her work, because her ideas arise from this interaction. Moreover she is depending on their help and participation to succeed her sculptural expeditions. Many ideas emerge on site, but for “Lemonade Igloo” orange colouring agent was already part of her luggage.

Photography is only part of Graafland her artistic process. But besides documenting her actions and interventions the photographs are also visual artefacts. Graafland her photographic work reached important international photography platforms and is represented by the leading Londen art gallery Michael Hoppen, which is devoted to the photographic image as art.

In former series Graafland didn’t even own a camera and was assisted by a photographer. Since photography has been her main technique she works with a Mamiya 7.2, a medium-format camera that uses 6x7 inch negatives. It is light and user-friendly which makes it easy to travel. Besides that it’s impossible to work with a digital camera in extreme circumstances like minus 25 degrees. Although her surreal and minimalistic images look like being manipulated, they are the result of pure analogue photography. While we are all getting used to cultivated and digital environments, Graafland confronts us with her beautiful, truly existing worlds!

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