Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan

interviews

16:00

"First, we will die. Then we will be forgotten." | Photographer Balder Olrik

What does a graveyard tell about life? Meet Danish artist Balder Olrik who has been walking around Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris for months, taking fascinating pictures of empty mausoleums. “I looked into one of the mausoleums, and it hit me really hard in the stomach. There was a huge bouquet of flowers made of silk with hundreds of spiderwebs on top of it. It was really painful. At this moment, I realized that we are going to be forgotten.” Olrik has recently been confronted with death in his personal life and took to Paris to recover from severe illness. By chance, he visited Père Lachaise and found – in the middle of vibrant Paris – a silent world of its own. “It’s obvious that somebody has loved somebody. The most touching mausoleums are the ones where you actually can see that there was love between some people – someone who is dead, somebody that’s alive. But at a certain point, it is left there. Maybe because the person who loved died. Or fell in love with somebody else.” “It made me realize that maybe I should just do the things I want to do in life. And maybe it is also an awkward worry – this worry of not being eternal. Why is it so hard for us to grasp the fact that we don’t live forever, that it has an end? Maybe it is causing us a lot of trouble while we live that we care so much about ourselves for when we are not alive.” Danish artist Balder Olrik (b. 1966) entered The Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen at age 16, one of the youngest artists ever to attend. Shortly after entering the academy, he was included in numerous exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide, gaining international recognition for his works. In 1998, Olrik left the art world and became an early pioneer in new media technology, launching a successful viral media company. Sixteen years later, he returned to art, focusing on photography primarily inspired by behavioural and perceptual science. Olrik expresses a distinct silence and solitude within his art, a theme prevalent throughout his early works to the present. He lives and works in Paris and Copenhagen. Balder Olrik was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris in October 2022.

interviews

01:21

Paul Graham Gives Advice to Young Photographers

“Start working, make mistakes, keep going.” Famous British photographer Paul Graham advises young people not to give up too early on their artistic dreams and ambitions. “Every time I start something new, it is junk, and I am embarrassed. But sooner or later, the world will whisper in your ear and say: Let me show you something far more interesting than your little idea. But you have to be prepared to listen.” Paul Graham (born 1956) is a British artist who has worked solely in the photographic medium for 45 years. He was born in Stafford, UK, to parents in the Royal Air Force, and after various relocations, grew up in Harlow, Essex, before studying Microbiology at Bristol University. While there, he discovered art photography and, on graduating, decided to pursue that full time. Working in colour from the late 1970s, his work was critical in moving documentary practice forward from classic black and white photography. He made three bodies of work in the UK during the 1980s, firstly along with the A1- The Great North Road (1981/2), then on Mrs Thatcher's unemployment crisis with Beyond Caring (1984) and lastly in Northern Ireland during the darker times of the mid-1980s with Troubled Land (1984-6). Since then, he has travelled and exhibited widely for four decades, works notably engaged with western Europe in New Europe, and Japan with Empty Heaven. His photography has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the inaugural show of Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, as well as a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2000 he moved to the USA, where he has completed three notable series of work, including a shimmer of possibility, which won the first Paris Photo book prize as the best photography book of the past 15 years. He lives in New York City with his partner and son. Paul Graham was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at his home in New York City in March 2022.