I LOVE was presented at the exhibition Correct at Hasselblad Center in Göteborg, Sweden, 2000.
How do we interpret the urban landscape in the Nordic countries? How aware are we of the nationalistic tendencies in the landscape? What would the perfect urban landscape look like?
I LOVE is about how we in the Nordic countries use symbols and the landscape to raise the companionship. The nature landscape has been changed into the urban landscape, which displays technological progress instead of natural romanticism. In the urban landscape we are daily confronted with everyday symbols like logos, products, brands etc…, that use traditional nationalistic symbols.
I have manipulated the contemporary city landscape by changing the surface and meaning of it and placing everyday nationalistic symbols into the city landscape. By this, I want to show how close the Nordic dream is, a dream of an urban landscape, in which control, order and efficiency rules.
This project automatically raises the question of whether photography represents the truth. I want the viewer to approve the pictures for what they are, but simultaneously find them a little too good to be true. I printed the pictures on Lambda, which means they are c-prints (normal colour prints). In this way I can conceal that they have been manipulated. All pictures are the same size (100X125 cm) to underline the notion of control.
