Equally Infinite
In the project Equally Infinite I am presenting my suggestion of what a portrait could be. Instead of focusing on the physical appearance I take my starting point in my experience of the person’s personality. I am interested in giving a sense of what is within the person.
The idea for the project sprouted when being with certain friends and family members I started noticing colours in or around them. I could not actually see the colours, but I strongly sensed them.
The many different shades of the colours reminded me of how nuanced people are and how difficult it is to put any person you know well into a box, but on the other hand how easy it is with people you don’t know.
Emmanuel Levinas, the French philosopher, teaches me about two different ways of approaching other people. He uses the words totality and infinity. Where totality tries to comprehend and determine the other person, infinity challenges you to insist on continuing to discover new sides of the same person.
I find the term of infinity extremely challenging but true. How many times have I not been surprised to see a person solidly stored in one of my many boxes suddenly move, expand and transform before my eyes? This has happened even with people I have known for many years.
Quick conclusions and determinations I think has always existed, and today with the social medias it has become more difficult to escape. We look at each other from the outside, from a distance, and we only scratch the surface. The stories told about us in the social medias are simplistic and untrue, but easy to believe.
On the contrary my pictures go to a level deeper and step into the sphere of real-life people. The pictures show what happens when we spend time being present with each other. The colours start to unfold and when we really see, listen and wait on one another, we set each other free to just be. Then, with a little luck: We get a glimpse of something bright and beautiful that seems to have leaked from the other persons core.
The digital age is a fast pace world and so to stop and look for nuances in people is not an easy task. My hope is that these portraits will inspire people to go closer and to not just observe from a distance. From there we might look the same, but in fact we are all equal in being different and ever changing.
The idea for the project sprouted when being with certain friends and family members I started noticing colours in or around them. I could not actually see the colours, but I strongly sensed them.
The many different shades of the colours reminded me of how nuanced people are and how difficult it is to put any person you know well into a box, but on the other hand how easy it is with people you don’t know.
Emmanuel Levinas, the French philosopher, teaches me about two different ways of approaching other people. He uses the words totality and infinity. Where totality tries to comprehend and determine the other person, infinity challenges you to insist on continuing to discover new sides of the same person.
I find the term of infinity extremely challenging but true. How many times have I not been surprised to see a person solidly stored in one of my many boxes suddenly move, expand and transform before my eyes? This has happened even with people I have known for many years.
Quick conclusions and determinations I think has always existed, and today with the social medias it has become more difficult to escape. We look at each other from the outside, from a distance, and we only scratch the surface. The stories told about us in the social medias are simplistic and untrue, but easy to believe.
On the contrary my pictures go to a level deeper and step into the sphere of real-life people. The pictures show what happens when we spend time being present with each other. The colours start to unfold and when we really see, listen and wait on one another, we set each other free to just be. Then, with a little luck: We get a glimpse of something bright and beautiful that seems to have leaked from the other persons core.
The digital age is a fast pace world and so to stop and look for nuances in people is not an easy task. My hope is that these portraits will inspire people to go closer and to not just observe from a distance. From there we might look the same, but in fact we are all equal in being different and ever changing.
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