Imagine Remembering, 2007
March second 2006 my grandfather, Viggo Larsen, passed away 93 years of age. He lived in an apartment at Østerbro in Copenhagen since 1939 and raised his children there. In 2005 I started to renovate the apartment since I was going to live there. When going through old boxes and things I found hundreds of old negatives with images that my grandfather had taken from his childhood up to the sixties.
My relationship with my grandfather has always been warm – but also superficial. I did not know he was such an eager photographer when he was young. I became fascinated when I went through his pictures and decided to work with them. The result is this project.
In the pictures of this project I see a story about personal and common impressions of growing up; the developing identity and sexuality as a child and teenager; and the process of learning how to live ones life. Primarily we remember the positive things in our lives, but the embarrassing, lonely and intense memories are still an important part of us. That is what we carry with us and in "Imagine Remembering" it often appears as the feeling of being trapped in the situation or the time we were in.
The project attempts to put the past and the present in perspective. It is an attempt to see what happens when the gap between then and now is erased - and the periods are put together in one. The persons loose their surroundings and something that does not belong there is added to the present surroundings. In that way the persons’ expressions get new meanings and the surroundings get new dimensions.
