Week 47 - 2019
Arnold Johansen, from the right you see Magne, 48 years old, from the left you see Gunn Inger 56 years old. From 2006. Belongs to the Preus museum Collection
Compound souls
This is not a picture (well, yes it is a picture), but it's a picture of a picture! Exactly like René Magritte's painting of a pipe with the inscription «Ceci n’est pas une pipe», we have to point out that this representation, as seen on screen or in the newspaper, is just a picture; a flat rendering of one specific image. This is important because sometimes an image is three dimensional.
Arnold Johansen (1953-) calls his images “folding images” or “strip images”. The method was already described in Gaspar Schott’s book from 1657, long before the invention of the camera. Johansen has merged together two photographs, strip by strip, and then folded it. This way, the image contains three motifs in total: one from each side and one from the front. Like the title suggest its a picture of Magne 48 years from the right, and Gunn Inger 56 years from the left.
The portraits within the folded image invite us to reflect on the component parts that make up a person, as well as our relation to each other. Like many other images, this one is best experienced in person. ‘From the right we see Magne 48 years, from the left we see Gunn Inger 56 years’ is part of the exhibition “The World in 3D”, currently on show at Preus museum until October 2020.