Riitta Ikonen: Meet our friend Bob.
We met on a wintery night
in the company of the members of the New York Indoor Gardening Society.
And one of the regulars was this charismatic gentleman
studying the wonders of carnivorous plants.
We were there
looking for collaborators for an art project
looking at modern humans' belonging to nature.
Karoline Hjorth: We couldn't resist slipping a little note in Bob's pocket
to say we'd love to hear from him.
And the next day, he called us and excitedly proclaimed how,
"This is not a time in my life when I want to lay around in bed."
And the next week,
we were all sitting on a J train to Forest Park in Queens.
RI: Bob has worked for decades
in New York's fashion photography industry,
and he had to be replaced by three people
when he eventually chose to move on to new adventures.
Bob agreed to collaborate with us
on the condition that we wouldn't mess with the style
that he had taken many decades to perfect.
So we promised to do just that,
and only added a few pine needles.
You might be wondering
why the two of us were trimming Bob's pine needle beret in the park
in the first place.
We met a few years prior,
when I was investigating on the internet,
looking for a collaborator for an art project
looking at modern humans' relationship to nature.
So I do what people do,
I go to Google and I type in three words:
"Norway,"
"grannies" and "photographer."
And I click on the number one search result,
which was Karoline Hjorth here.
(Laughter)
KH: I had just put out a book about Norwegian grandmothers.
And initially, we teamed up
to look at how natural phenomena were explained through human form.
And we started investigating folktales
in a small coastal city in Norway.
RI: We reasoned that the older the local interviewee,
the closer we would be to these talking rocks of these stories.
KH: Agnes, for example, is Norway's oldest parachuting granny.
Her latest jump was at 91.
And this portrait is an homage to the fabled north wind
often featured in Nordic folk tales.
We met another fabled character called Lyktemann,
on a bog just outside of Oslo.
Lyktemann's presence as mysterious lights has been recorded for centuries
in many different cultures under as many different names,
like Joan the wad, will-o'-the-wisp,
or the man of the lantern.
The contemporary view
or the contemporary explanation to these lights
is that they are the product of ignited marsh gas.
The more adventurous view
is that a character appears when the fog hangs low,
and there are unwary travelers about who have lost their path.
RI: He is known for being quite a mischievous character,
never quite revealing the true nature of his intentions.
KH: And as Bengt is an expert in astronavigation,
an ex-submarine captain,
and the previous chief mate on board the tall ship Christian Radich,
Bengt was the perfect personification of Lyktemann.
RI: In our initial quest
of looking into the contemporary role of folklore,
we were quickly pooh-poohed
for looking into something seen as childish children's bedtime stories.
Even saying the word "folklore" got people looking really puzzled.
KH: And it wasn't just the accent.
(Laughter)
RI: We even had an eighth-generation local potter state
that people from this region
have come up with some of this nation's best inventions,
and they don't have time to turn rocks and wonder what is under.
This rejection was exactly what we needed
to keep poking further into this subject.
(Laughter)
KH: We continued to interview people
about their relationship with their surroundings,
and started wondering
what's happening with people's imagination.
Can our relationship to nature really be explained so pragmatically,
so entirely boringly,
so that a rock is just a good old straightforward rock,
and a lake is just a basic wet place,
entirely separate from us?
Can our surroundings really be explained to such a dull degree of rationality?
RI: The name of our project, "Eyes as Big as Plates,"
is borrowed from a folk tale.
And there's one with a dog that's living beneath a bridge
and another version,
where there is a troll doing the same thing.
And this open-eyed and potentially risky approach
to seeing the world around you
has become an emblem of the curiosity that guides our interactions.
KH: Serendipity is our project manager.
And ideally, we meet our collaborators through random chance.
In the opposite lane in the swimming pool,
at the choir practice,
in a noodle bar,
or in a Senegalese fishing harbor,
as you do.
Each image starts with a conversation,
much like a casual interview.
RI: And we never call these collaborators "models,"
as there are three authors to each image,
all equally crucial to the realization of their portrait.
There is no age limit,
absolutely anybody with an interesting lived life
is more than qualified to join.
KH: This is Boubou.
His son-in-law happened to be in this harbor
when we came looking for locations.
And one impromptu house visit and fish market shopping spree later,
Boubou and his family all waded in a low tide with us.
RI: A wearable sculpture is born from the conversation
with each collaborator
and is made from materials found in the surroundings.
About one third of Senegal's arable land is devoted to millet,
an incredibly itchy to wear,
nutritious and hardy staple with deep cultural roots.
This is Mane,
one of the grand grandmothers of the Ndos village,
a tornado of vigor and energy.
And she applauded to our invitation
to portray her in her personal favorite crop,
with which she works every day.
KH: It's important that participation is voluntary.
(Laughter)
If you have doubts in the beginning,
you will definitely regret it
by the time Riitta is stuffing cold, wet bull kelp up your nose.
(Laughter)
Working with an analog camera means the process can be slow
and physically challenging.
The person in front of the camera
might be kneeling for three hours in a freezing sleet,
be bombarded by mosquitoes,
or actually, they can also be allergic
to the local flora they've just been coated in.
RI: And many other things.
(Laughter)
And then, there's, of course, the elements.
Unpredictability is one of the main drivers
that keeps this process interesting.
For example, in Iceland,
we were in operation mode, shooting for two weeks,
without knowing that the camera was not functioning properly.
Ooh, right?
KH: And because we work with analog cameras
with actual film rolls,
the excitement from the shoots keeps giving
until we pick up the negatives from the lab.
RI: Luckily, Edda, pictured here,
was one of the few that was captured on film in Iceland.
Pictured here amid bubbling, steaming hot springs
between two tectonic plates.
Supposedly, there are these little hot spring birds
that dive into these bubbles,
and according to the legend,
these little birds represent the souls of the dead.
We have the honor
of working with some of the toughest and bravest and coolest people around,
and thoroughly enjoy
how some of our works and portraits stomp on stereotypes about age,
gender and nationality.
KH: To us, much of Western society is unnecessarily confused
when it comes to the usefulness
of this absolutely rock-and-roll demographic.
(Laughter)
RI: Attitude, life experience and stamina are some of the main traits
we have found amongst all our collaborators,
as well as a formidable curiosity for new experiences.
KH: We have noticed how the solitary figures in our images
are increasingly viewed as representations of the age of loneliness,
known as the Eremocene.
RI: We are trying to encourage
a new way of participating in and communicating with our surroundings.
KH: There is the assumption
that humans have created a new geological epoch,
and we need to learn how to see what our role is in it.
RI: We'll be working with farmers,
cosmologists, geo-ecologists,
ethnomusicologists and marine biologists
to see how art can change the way we think, act and live.
KH: It's not clear who or what is the protagonist in our work,
whether it's the human figure or the nature around them,
and we like it that way.
Ten years and 15 countries into the project,
we are not sure how, if, or when this project will end.
RI: We have vowed to continue as long as it's fun,
and we'll keep making new images and more books that explore --
KH: How to balance life amongst the effects of the climate crisis.
The writer Roy Scranton beautifully summarized
how our project can be approached.
"We need to learn to see,
not just with Western eyes,
but with Islamic eyes and Inuit eyes,
not just with human eyes but with golden-cheeked warbler eyes,
coho salmon eyes
and polar bear eyes,
and not even just with eyes at all,
but with the wild, barely articulate being of clouds and seas
and seas and rocks and trees and stars."
RI: Perhaps if we start seeing ourselves through coho salmon eyes,
we might begin to synchronize better with our fellow flora, fauna and funga.
To do this requires both imagination and empathy.
And curiosity is at the root of both.
KH: As Halvar, one of our first collaborators, said nearly 10 years ago,
"If you stop being curious,
you might as well be dead."
(Both) Thank you.
(Laughter)
(Applause)