The Idea

During the final year of three at the Swedish equivalent to Upper Secondary school I collaborated with a friend to put together a photo exhibition. Our idea was to travel to Paris to photograph the life of the city of light. Novices as we were, we managed to ruin the film and the trip became more about the three French men we met and tried our first ever spliff with. We were 19 and completely new to photography as an art medium. We had read somewhere, that an artist that I now have forgotten the name of, once said that you should always reject the first seven ideas as these are likely to be copies of work that you have previously seen or simply just rubbish. To make original work you need to start at the eight idea. We took this very literary and ended up with a triptych of the inside of a festival toilet in juxtaposition with a grid of dogs with their owners, thrown in was also some black and white nudes, elderly couples kissing as well as a gay person in a nun outfit.

We sourced the lobby of an estate agent as our exhibiting space and opened with a speech, canapes and sparkling wine. I even think we sold some prints.

Looking back it is easy to see that neither of these vastly different body's of works were resolved, as we had stuck with the eight idea concept and moved on after each idea was “completed” until we reached our designated deadline.

With a few more years experience I can start to see what this unknown artist meant in his approach to originality. Making considered and resolved work is not jumping from one idea to the other but rather to rework the idea in question until a resolution is found. For the lucky ones this happens at first attempt but for some it might take a few twists of the angle to see the final resolution. In my current project these probably exceeds the twenty. As research is done one resolution moves on the the other in an almost seamless flow of work. Some of the resolutions along the way becomes their own bodies of work but also function as research towards the finished piece, all revolving around the same core idea or theory. It is tempting to move on to a completely other theme or interest (from festival toilets to dogs for example) as sometimes the hurdles and issues seem unresolvable or for the fact that another idea just too good to miss.