ABOUT THE ARTIST

Rolf Sørensen-Lyle (b. 1945) lives and works on the island of Vesterøy in the Hvaler archipelago.

I have been through many phases in my long photographic life, from my first black and white small format photos, to an Ansel Adams' attempt to aestheticize nature with large format 8x10. I have photographed many books, also written some. Many books where photographed together with the photographer Jørn Bøhmer Olsen.

I have worked with a lot of different print techniques, such as Gum Bichromate Print. In such a process, you choose the colors yourself. Determine whether a stone is red or blue, a flower yellow or green. It was exciting freedom.

Throughout my career, I have been curious about books where
photography has been the theme. One day I saw a stack of books by the Swiss photographer Ernst Haas beaming at me from a display window in one of Oslo's bookshops. The book was called "The Creation". And creation it was. I studied the pictures and flipped back and forth... That was exactly what it was all about. He was also like me and Paul Simon, a Kodachrome man. Kodachrome 25 was wonderfully sharp. There was a catch to it and that was that there were often long exposure times. So why not twist it all and say that long exposures are the new thing now. And so it was. With ISO 25 and Nikon F, things had to be allowed to move a bit during shooting.

Then came a long drought. The universe and the heart collapsed. The photographic image went from analogue to digital, from film-like to something that could only be viewed via a PC. It meant that I had to (very reluctantly) accept that my gravity was gone. I was floating. Kodak, which had given us "the nice bright colors", failed to turn around before Waterloo.

And so, now I thrive in my photographic cave with a PC that I don't understand. I take pictures apart and put them back together in Photoshop. I can choose the color, decide for myself whether a stone is red or blue – a flower yellow or green. I am where I want to be.