“I was super into film and music and art, but had never thought about doing anything with it.”
Where are you currently based, and what’s your studio like?
I’m based in Copenhagen – I’ve been here for 20 years. My studio is right in the center – I would call it a curated mess. Just the right amount of mess! It is pretty small, big enough to do still-life shoots but you wouldn’t get a car in there. And I have a lot of images left over from exhibitions scattered all over the place so it is also my storage at the same time.
Can you share your creative upbringing? Were you introduced to photography early on, and what’s your fondest childhood memory related to it?
I don’t really have a creative upbringing. I studied philosophy with politics at university, and after that I traveled a bit, I was a ski bum, I worked as a chef while traveling as I was into food and could cook, and did a lot of other shitty jobs as well. But I never thought about doing anything creative – I was super into film and music and art, but had never thought about doing anything with it. I ended up in Copenhagen, and out of the blue one day I decided it would be fun to design some tee shirts. I had never done anything like that, but I sold them quickly and taught myself to use photoshop and illustrator, and that was the beginning of my creative life. I was 27.
I don’t have any strong childhood photography memories – just holiday snaps. My mum kept amazing albums full of our lives, which I am really bad at doing and have a constant bad conscience about – I’ll get to it one day. My grandfather was a keen amateur photographer, and when I got into photography I found a box of his old camera gear and started using it, so I guess that is the closest it comes to being in the blood.
What inspired your focus on architecture, industry, and science in photography?
I was working as a graphic designer for an artist and designer called Henrik Vibskov in the late 00’s, and they didn’t have a house photographer, so I picked up a camera and began to shoot all the lookbooks and shows. I got hooked on photography, built a darkroom in my apartment, bought loads of old cameras, and experimented a lot. When I decided I wanted to go full-time as a photographer, I knew I needed a niche – what kind of photographer was I going to be? I wanted to travel the world, see exciting things, and hopefully get paid well. I stumbled across the work of a couple of old industrial photographers who were working in the 50’s and 60’s – Maurice Broomfield and Wolfagng Seivers. When I saw their work it was a lightbulb moment, I knew that was what I wanted to do, so I just went full steam ahead trying to blag my way into anywhere that would let me in and build up a portfolio.
