intervals and forms of stones of stars

3 wall photographs mounted on the facade of
Arken Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (2017)
Series of 30 cameraless photographs, 20.3×25.4 cm
Artist’s book published by Humboldt Books

intervals and forms of stones of stars is a photographic field study of a Nordic man-made beach landscape (the landscape in which ARKEN Museum of Modern Art is situated). Located near Copenhagen, Køge Bay Beach Park is a 7-kilometer-long recreational area reclaimed from the sea. While highly planned and regulated, the idea was to create a landscape that looked like wild nature.

Through a series of cameraless photographic registrations, Buhl maps the biotope’s flora, fauna, and particles and draws connections between the characteristics of the site and its photographic representation. Her photographs are inspired by the cameraless photographic works of William Henry Fox Talbot (1840s) and August Strindberg (1890s); images created without a photographic lens, only by use of light and light sensitive surfaces. In the photographs, dust particles resemble the night sky and the wings of an insect look like a topographical map.

Part of the project is Buhl’s artist’s book intervals and forms of stones of stars, a close reading of this anthropocene biotope, its botany, and its cultural context. The book contains the series of photographs as well as a text of field notes and two conversations, with Nils Bubandt, Professor of Anthropology, Aarhus University and with Lucy Gallun, Assistant Curator of Photography at MoMA, New York, reflecting on the site of investigation and the photographic registrations of it.

The project is realized on the occasion of the exhibition NATURE (RE)TURNS.