invited guest: Svend Videbak

I am glad to have Svend here on the F Blog. He is a great photographer.
And hey Svend...there are big white ships leaving for Stockholm every
day. Hope to see you around. invited by ulf fågelhammar

In my earliest memory, I am making a picture. I’m perhaps five
years old. Sitting in my little chair, hunched over my little table,
I’m drawing with crayons on a piece of foolscap and I am delighted
with myself. The room is sunny, warm. My drawing is sunny, warm.
I love the sensation of the crayon sliding over the paper, leaving
a trail of itself under my imperfect control.






I’m 39 now and nothing has changed. Some years ago I borrowed my
father’s old Leica, which he had bought brand new in Copenhagen in 1956
– thanks to a friend of his, a press photographer, who acquired the camera
for him at a steep discount. (“Otherwise, forget it! Too damn expensive!”
was how my father punctuated the story.) I thought that since my father
wasn’t using the old camera (he couldn’t see to focus anymore) I’d give
it a try, fool around with it, see what happened. Thank God I did. The
old Leica opened the door into my visual imagination, a door that had
been closed for too long with depressing consequences.







I love to see and think photographically, imagining how something will
look when photographed. I am gaining greater and greater control over
the medium all the time, and yet accidents still happen and I welcome
the magic they bring. Increasingly, I am thinking about themes, stories
and ideas and how to express them visually with photography as just
one picture-making tool in a toolbox containing drawing, painting, graphic
design and computer programs. I have no objective, really, other than
pleasing myself. I’m still five years old, sitting in my little chair, hunched
over my little table, drawing with my crayons on a piece of foolscap.



Titles from top:
- St Tropez frolics
- What is creativity? (1)
- What is creativity? (2)
- What is creativity? (3)
- What is creativity? (4)
- The solitary cyclist
- Night field

Pictures and text©Svend Videbak