Det jeg var, John Erik Riley. — *Det jeg var,* John Erik Riley.

From January to February 2020, Fotogalleriet will look more closely at the photobook as an exhibition space in Le Book Club, a show unravelling in five chapters over five weeks. In light of this, we reignite our interview series looking closely at book production. This week with writer John Erik Riley,

The last decade has seen the publication of more photobooks than in the last 170 years put together according to the PhotoBook Museum. But a seminar at c/o Berlin last year, Photobooks: RESET, started from the premise that the photobook is in crisis. What do you think, is the photobook in trouble?

I certainly hope not, as I’ve just plunged into the field of photobooks myself. Det jeg var from Flamme forlag combines stories and short prose with colour photography, so if there is a crisis, I either didn’t get the memo or chose to ignore it.

In a broader sense, though, my response to the question would be ‘No’. Where is the evidence of a crisis? Doesn’t the sheer volume of publications – and their breadth of expression – suggest that we live in an extremely creative and expansive phase in the history of the book itself? I’m a collector of photobooks and a photography critic, and I find myself fascinated by the amount of imagination – and the sense of craft – reflected in many works today. With that comes an expectation of something more, an enhanced reflection on or contemplation of the role of the image itself. The simple photobook, with a foreword, afterword and collection of fabulous shots, doesn’t necessarily cut it anymore.

Midnight Milk, Marie Sjøvold. — *Midnight Milk,* Marie Sjøvold.

I see a willingness to push the envelope. A masterpiece like Midnight Milk by Marie Sjøvold is a good example of what I’m discussing here. It’s personal without feeling overly realistic. It’s smart, sometimes ethereal, but also full of emotion and wonder. And its use of materials and printing methods is nothing short of mind-boggling. In addition to containing wonderfully bewildering photographs, it makes use of various materials and enters into a dialogue with a children’s book classic by Tove Jansson. Her book is not only visual, but narrative, poetic, literary. This opens up new depths for the reader or viewer. Every time I page through the book, I find something new – not necessarily in a particular image, but in the connections that are established between various modes of expression and media.

Now, I come from the literary world, first and foremost. I’m a writer who also makes pictures, and in recent years, I’ve chosen to combine these approaches, hopefully in ways that are new to the reader. Or, if not new, then at least enticing or thought-provoking. Det jeg var (What I was) is the most recent manifestation of this exploration. I sense that I’m sounding more theoretical in my approach than I actually am. Øynene i ørkenen, which has long-form essays about photography in the digital age, and the Norwegian newspapers for which I write are more fitting places for that sort of thing. Det jeg var provides the reader with small flashes of poetry, comedy and tragedy. The photography included therein is meant to do the same.

The end result, if it works as intended, is like a network of pulsating narrative forms, whose organic interaction hopefully takes on a life of its own in the mind of the reader. Central to both text and image are senses of place and self, and my own experiences in places like Norway, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the United States. What is a meaningful story? What is worth saving, given that time erases everything? How do you deal with life’s multiple vanishing acts? These are questions that are central to photography itself, and I want to incorporate this interest into a literary context. Or rather, I want to use both a visual and a literary approach to see what happens when these languages collide.

Loosely translated, Det jeg var means ‘What I once was’, and the book reflects this interest. My story isn’t simple and straightforward, but more like the collision I’m describing, the intertwining of various emotions, memories and forms of meaning. I’m multicultural and multimodal. The form of my narrative is a reflection of function.

I’m actually surprised that so many writers are reticent to experiment in similar ways, given how easily accessible photography is today. The closest we get is a Sebaldian, quasi-documentarian approach, which was rampant in the early 2000s, in which photography is meant to add a tinge of lived history or authenticity to the literary work. This method is very specific, however – that is: only one among many. Although W.G. Sebald is an inspiring master, my work has very little in common with a novel like Austerlitz (some would say: to a fault). The only similarity between the two is that his and my books contain photography. The photographs themselves, however, and what they express, vary greatly.

Blind Spot, Teju Cole. — *Blind Spot*, Teju Cole.

There are books we keep coming back to, as references and because a second or third reading can give new insights. Is there a book (or are there books) that you keep coming back to?

I already mentioned Midnight Milk. Given that I’ve waded into a discussion about more literary photobooks, however, I want to mention two works that I’ve had the pleasure to review (for Morgenbladet, a Norwegian weekly). The first of these is Blind Spot by Teju Cole, who’s an acclaimed author, art historian, photographer, curator and critic. His book is a series of essay snapshots, each placed in conjunction with a photograph. The result is a combination of photobook, travelogue, autobiography and criticism. We visit Lagos, New York and various other locales, but the texts and photographs rarely concern themselves with obvious tropes. Instead, Cole writes about the things we sometimes ignore or forget to reflect upon. The title, Blind Spot, has several meanings. It’s specifically about an eye illness that the narrator suffers from, which may lead to blindness – tragedy for a photographer! But his work is also abstract and introspective. What do we miss?, Cole asks. What should we focus on?

Another contemporary classic is Sally Mann’s Hold Still, a heartfelt and honest autobiography, which is full of photographs and ideas about what a picture can mean. I’m stretching the idea of the photobook here, but I’m doing so on purpose, as I feel that the space between literature and photography remains relatively unexplored. What you often get is the great writer writing about a photographer – in a foreword or afterword, say – or a photographer making portraits of famous writers. Given this context, I was surprised to discover that Mann is not only a wonderful photographer, but a great author and thinker. I particularly like her ideas about photography and memory, how the photograph – and here she’s speaking about her own experience – ‘eradicates the memory of the moment’. She only remembers the result, not the event itself. In an autobiography, this has some interesting implications, which she explores throughout the text, in pictures and in words.

I don’t want to sound like I’m badmouthing more traditional photobooks, though. The classic volume of pictures, without the narrative accompaniment, has inherent value in and of itself. A recent discovery for me is The Castle by Richard Mosse, who’s perhaps most famous for his infrared photographs from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His recent work is a series of thermal photographs of refugee camps, printed with silver ink on matte, black paper. His approach could have resulted in an arrogant aestheticisation of suffering, but to me it has the opposite effect. His pictures bring the world closer and evoke acute concern, in a way that’s both surprising and meaningful. On the other end of the spectrum, in the realm of the traditional image-making canon, I’ll always remain a fan of American masters such as William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander and Saul Leiter.

As a writer, how would you work with the photo book? What’s the purpose of the book for you?

The physical book is my main gallery and the way I most often curate my own work. One recent attempt – before Det jeg var, that is – was a collaboration with the Norwegian author Roy Jacobsen. My role there was more supplemental. He’d written a moving autobiographical account of his mother’s history and death, which also included – or sprang out of – a close reading of the Vigeland sculpture park in Oslo. I happen to publish Jacobsen’s work, so we ended up working together, with added help from book designer Stian Hole. It was an interesting challenge. Sculptures aren’t necessarily the most intriguing photographic subjects. Fortunately, we were pressed for time, which meant that I had to make the photographs in the dead of winter. This problem became a solution: snow, ice and the winter light became visual echoes of the content of the text. The form of the artworks is visible, but we also see that they’re exposed to the elements, as sculptures generally are in public parks.

The content of my new book, Det jeg var, is all mine, however. Early on, I made a few decisions that led me to the end result. I decided to work with an editor, Geir Nummedal, who has a lot of experience with visual content. And I chose to work with a design that places texts and photographs in a form that gives equal play to both. I didn’t want the book to look like a photobook with some random texts here and there; nor did I want to underplay the content of the photographs. The solution, in the end, was to construct swashes of texts and images. There are seven sections in total: four photo collections and three prose-fiction collections. Contrary to earlier books of mine, the pictures aren’t printed next to – or made an integral part of – the prose portions of the volume. Instead, they’re clusters of meaning, more akin to essays or stories or poetry cycles.

My hope is to make a beautiful book, of course, something that’s nice to look at, in and of itself. But I also want to illicit an emotional response, without being too overt about it. Gradually, as one pages through the volume, the reader will hopefully make connections – and find new forms of meaning – along the way. I already mentioned that Bosnia-Herzegovina and the United States are places that I feel connected to. With regard to the former, my wife happens to be an expert on sexual violence in war; much of her field work has been conducted in Bosnia. I’ve also travelled in the region and written about it, most recently in a long essay for Lithub in conjunction with a rather heated debate about Peter Handke’s Nobel Prize.

I find that our Bosnian experiences – like the present political crisis in the United States – are somewhat difficult to process. Half the time, all I want to do is throw things and yell. Instead, I’ve tried to approach our disturbing age with all my senses open. What is beauty, what provides solace, when things are as they are? What is my story? What is remembrance? And how do traumas infuse our lives, in ways both large and small? Can darkness sometimes be converted into light, a negative become a positive, as in photography? Are there experiences that are impossible to accept, and, if so, how do we deal with them in a literary form? Add to this a huge amount of gallows humour, and the occasional satirical piece, and you perhaps get a sense of the tone of Det jeg var.

Although I’m quite specific about historical context and the events themselves, I don’t want to be too blatant in my approach to trauma and memory. I’ll leave that job to photojournalists and documentarians, and stick to aesthetics. Integral to Det jeg var – at least to me – are a sense of empathy, an attention to detail and a love for fleeting moments. Photography captures moments that are behind us. A text describes something that only exists when the words are processed in the mind of a reader. The combination of grief, wonder and compassion – of absence and presence – that this entails is the wellspring of my work. Hopefully, the end result will be a source of pleasure, reflection and sustained emotional resonance for the reader.