USA My Way

USA My Way is a flow of images that chased me rather than me chasing after them.

In the year 2006 me and my wife sold all our worldly goods and started, along with our dog, a journey in to insecurity. In Texas USA we bought a camper and in it we traveled for two years, through USA, Canada, Mexico and Central America.

Before the journeys start, I had some ideas about cleaning my mind of all things I had prior worked on in terms of photography and reboot. Leave the over-processed computer-manipulated images and the research of what is a photograph in the digital age and turn back to the past of simplified photography.

Working with similar methods as with my poetry, which come to me, I write down and then publish (or not), certain type of prose or rap flow emerges. This flow ,Is what I wanted to try out in my photography. Kind of spontaneity or instant image. Nothing should be decided. No place should I go to especially to take pictures. Nowhere should I wait for the right light nor the right moment. What would happen in front of the lens was it. The way of traveling also added to the certainty that we never returned to the same spot again. Therefore there was no chance of retake, because there is no retake on a moment that has gone by.

The work methods of a pro advertising photographer, where every thing has to be perfect before the shutter is pressed, thus where left behind and the amateur that points the lens to any thing and every thing brought forth again.

In a certain way I had in the back of my mind the thoughts of making classical documentary or street photography of people. It did not happen, even though we traveled through popular tourist destinations. It is because of the way I worked, that nothing should be chased, this happened. There where no people and the few that where did not impress me to lift the camera. They did not touch me enough. That is except for people in two places. Berlin and Slab city. In both places I was asked not to take pictures. So I did not. Still the sense of people is floating around in every image.

I experimented mostly with only two lenses and the different effect of them on the motives. The result from that experiment gets mixed in the end where experiments from the first part blend with experiment from second part of the trip and become one. From there are born the melodies of the work that sing like a rime with in the rime and even though they could stand alone, they interweave and blend in the end to make the grand finale of the composition.

USA my way is the photographers search for him self, search for the amateur in him self as well as a travel diary in the form of a prose, but in the end it is a work of its own that hopefully asks as many questions as it answers.

USA my way is a documentary work in the sense that the way things where, that is the way they where captured. Each frame is the whole frame as it was framed with choice of the camera and lens, and nothing has been taken away nor any thing added. On top of that digital development was kept at its minimum

This is USA, My Way,flowing to me, as it was, at that time, when I felt the way I felt.

This is a short version of the lecture/talk about this work first held in the national history museum of Iceland.
In this case I decided to create music to the slideshow and let the images speak for them self in 7 minutes rather than tell the story and thoughts about them which takes about 45min.