Interview: Anne Hardy

Anne Hardy: Prime, 2009. 134 x 164 cm. Diasec mounted c-type print.

When you develop your installations - what is your starting point? Do you have a special character in mind, do you make drawings or do you start playing with objects and materials?

Every picture starts differently. I begin with objects, an idea of a certain kind of architecture, or sometimes something quite formal like a certain kind of space, or feeling of light. These things become triggers from which I develop the work. I don’t make drawings usually. I look through the camera as I move things around and build them as a form of sketching.

Do you have a clear vision from the beginning you are holding on to or is the appearance changing a lot on the way, when you see how the materials are working together?

It develops a lot on the way. I don’t start with a precise sketch.

What kind of compositional decisions are you making? Is there a certain concept of how the pictures should appear?

It's hard to generalise about this. It's different from image to image. One thing that is consistent though, is that I want the image, when it is exhibited, to give you a feeling that you are standing in front of this place, as if you could enter it.

What is occupying you most in realizing your installations? Where is your focus?

Again, this varies with every work, but it’s important that the place feels like it has its own logic that has been generated by the absent occupants.

Is it important that the space is telling a story?

Of course, but its not the specifics of that story that are important, more a general feeling.

Anne Hardy: Cipher, 2007. 144 x 174 cm. Diasec mounted c-type print.

Your pictures are triggering the viewer to imagine the missing person who inhabits or uses the room. At the same time ones imagination never succeeds. The installations are so enigmatic that you are thrown back to the world of the objects, that you are trying to decode. Is this play with the viewer something that interests you?

It’s important to me that the photos are convincing but still appear as fiction. So you have to try to resolve them by thinking about things you do understand, experiences from your ‘real’ life. At the same time it is important that the images do not have an actual outcome, a specific resolution. I am interested in disrupting the idea that photography gives you information and can tell you things precisely. I try to use the indexical and recording capacity of photography to represent things, to which there are no clear-cut answer or solution.

Can you describe the characters you are visualizing with these rooms? Is there something they have in common?

I don’t think really about a specific character. It is more the feeling of their presence and a type of action they might be engaged with. I think if there is anything in common between the spaces, it is more about how they are geographically positioned in relationship to the viewer: They are all kind of hidden away, underneath the surface.

How did you pick the work for the exhibtion Day & Night, concerning that it should be presented in a public space?

I chose the work in collaboration with the curator. We considered which works might work best in this particular context and with relation to particular sites in Copenhagen. It’s an experiment for me because normally I have my works presented in a very specific way. It’s a risk. I will see how it works.

Anne Hardy: Unity, 2009. 143.5 x 177 cm. Diasec mounted c-type print.

How do you usually present your works?

They are presented as diasec mounted c-type prints, shown indoors in a gallery. I think a lot about the scale of the work, how the scale of the space will feel in relation to you when you look at it, so that you can imagine a physical relationship with these spaces. Unity (which is now on a billboard in front of Tivoli) is usually around 1.70 m x 1.45 m. On the billboard it is more than twice that size, but somehow the larger context of the outdoor space helps that to work ok, although I think they would work better if the image went all the way to the ground.

Do you manipulate your photos afterwards?

No.

Do you work with digital or analogue photography?

I work with analogue photography. It's the language I know best, and it does what I want it to do.

What is important for you in the use of lights you are setting up in the installation?

Light builds form, it shapes the spaces physically and also psychologically, and of course also without light there is no photograph either. Certain types of light, the colour, the form of the light, create particular atmospheres that are familiar from other situations in our lives, I work with that.

Anne Hardy: Drift, 2004. 120 x 180 cm. Diasec mounted c-type print.

It seems like all the spaces in your photos are interiors of a certain size, and with a certain action going on. There are no rooms from private homes like a kitchen or living room and there are no huge rooms or sceneries built outside. Do you work with specific guidelines concerning what kind of spaces you do or do not want to show?

I am not interested in domestic spaces. I am interested in the kind of space that is somehow improvised, or in limbo, perhaps its original use has ended, and it has been adapted for a new purpose. A space that is somehow both private and public at once. The kind of spaces where often the people who use them don’t think too much about how they are built or what they look like, they simply provide a place in which to engage in their activities.

How imporatant are the titles to your work? Do you think of them as supplementing the photos?

Titles are a further layer of suggestion, perhaps directing you towards a feeling about the space, but not defining its purpose

Where is the balance for you between the familiarity of the found objects and the unfamiliarity of the enigmatic setting?

Well, I do incorporate things that feel familiar, perhaps objects, maybe the way the light falls, but a light switch or a door handle are also ways to engage you in the space, points of entry.

Are there sources beside art that inspire you for your work, e.g. architecture, film sets, theatre scenes, literature or interior design)?

Literature is a big inspiration for me, writers like, Haruki Murakami, JG Ballard, and Brett Easton Ellis. Writing that deals with a space that somehow confuses the physical space with the psychological one.

Some aspects of your work can be found in everyday life: People are decorating their homes with photos, souvenirs and other things, which have a special meaning for them. Objects, which also create an element of fiction in this identity construction, beside the visual reality. Is that something that interests you?

I am interested in how someone might arrange or place objects that is significant to them, which although meaningless to someone else somehow indicated that it is important and intentional. Photography adds a further layer to this, as unintentional, accidental ‘arrangements’ (like dust on the floor for example) take on as much meaning within the photograph as things that look more intentionally placed.

Thank you.

Anne Hardy: Coordinate, 2009. 124 x 159 cm. Diasec mounted c-type print.