Week 13 - 2106
Oskar Puschmann, Kvakestad, Askim kommune, 2003/2005. Tilhører Preus museums samling.
Forandring fryder?
Variety: the spice of life?
The same place but so different. For fourteen years landscape geographer Oskar Puschmann (b. 1965) has traveled around Norway in the footsteps of historical photographers and shot changes in the landscape.
His pairs of pictures can have a time span of 150 years or in some cases only a few hours. What makes a new picture worth taking is that an alteration has occurred - perhaps a fire or clearing - with the resulting pictures having a story to tell.
The method is called rephotographing, and it's more than just shooting the same motif from the same angle or standpoint. The photographer also tries to recreate the focal distance and light conditions so that it's possible to see continuity and change in the landscape. A precise rephotographing can yield an almost identical motif from the place photographed earlier.
The pair of pictures we see here show a landscape photographed at an interval of only two years, but the change is obvious. The priorities of our own time are patent: transport and traffic take precedence over good farmland, with Norwegian agriculture relentlessly being set aside.
Puschmann hopes his work will provoke reflection and constructive debate about changes in the landscape and our use of natural resources.
Oscar Puschmann will come to the Preus Museum for a lecture April 10. You can read about his project at tilbakeblikk.no