Photo: Christoffer Munch Andersen

intervals and forms of stones of stars

Artist’s book (2017)
English text, 56 pages, 20.3×25.4 cm
Edition: 600 copies
Text: Nanna Debois Buhl in conversation with
Nils Bubandt and Lucy Gallun
Design: Anni’s
Published by Humboldt Books
Buy online

intervals and forms of stones of stars is an investigation of a Nordic man-made beach landscape. 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. Containing photographs, field notes, and conversations, the book is a reflection of this anthropocene biotope, its botany, and its cultural context.

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.

The book contains the series of full-page 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 book is produced alongside the work intervals and forms of stones of stars on the occasion of the exhibition NATURE (RE)TURNS at ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Denmark 2017.