Laure Prouvost, *This Means*, 2019. Glass, nailbrush, steel, pump, water, 203 x 180 x 180 cm. Courtesy of the artist and carlier / gebauer, Berlin/Madrid. Photo: Trevor Good, carlier / gebauer, Berlin/Madrid.

Afterimage by Nina Strand:

There is a newsletter. Laure Provoust opens a major new show. My day (and my soul) is slowly sinking and the accompanying photo lifts me up, it makes me smile. Breasts like eyes and head. Lots of tentacles, one even giving a thumbs up, as if to signal that it will all work out, the rest holding water and a cup and other stuff. Some are just hanging there, ready to work. I am reminded of something Aretha Franklin said when asked about her greatest challenges in life. I am pretty sure the journalist did not expect her to reply that the hardest thing was deciding what to make for her children's dinner every day. Although I am a long way from being Franklin, I feel very much like that octopus holding on to important things.

‘We must keep our energy,' my friend says, or rather shouts at me, as we are in the noisiest hour of the day for the bar. When I arrived, the waiter scolded me for not saying bonjour before asking for a table. He was right, I was very tired, it's been a year this week since Tuesday when the misogynist was re-elected. Is this a test, are they letting him try again to see if he can do something good? I wonder if he appreciates being treated fairly, with none of his opponents shouting that the election was rigged.

My friend and I both long to live in two cities. I tell her about a still I’ve just seen on Instagram, from a film where the subtitles read: ‘All my life I've felt like I've been in two places at once. Here and somewhere else.’ It's the week of the photo fair in this city, and after all the images I've seen at this year's very spacious and splendid edition, and also on the boat of books, this is what remains in my mind. My friend wonders why these stills don’t pop up in her feed. In hers it is as if Princess Diana and Whitney Houston are still alive, they are in almost every post she sees.

She says she is staying in Paris for now. No need to go where the madman is taking over again. The music is back to normal, so are the shoulders of the angry waiter, many have left for dinner and we can spread out more. I tell her she's right, we need to conserve our energy. A year into a catastrophic war and with this unknown uncertainty unfolding. We didn't order wine, just citron chaud for the vitamins. As I leave, I make sure to wish the waiter a bonne soirée and also bon courage, because I think he, and we all, will need it.

Afterimage is an ekphrastic series about that one image you see when you close your eyes, the one still lingering in your mind. We invite artists and writers to reflect on an image they can't shake. This column has been a part of Objektiv since our very first issue, originally titled Sinnbilde in Norwegian. As the sea of images continues to swell, the series explores which visuals linger and take root in today's endless stream - much like a song that plays on repeat in your head. Whether it's an image glimpsed on a billboard, a portrait in a newspaper, a family photo from an album or an Instagram reel, we're interested in those fleeting moments that stay with you and refuse to let go.