“The photo always holds two layers, the concrete and the emotional. You must involve your own experience and perception when decoding the photo, and only then does it disseminate its full message”
– photographer Krass Clement
In 1991 Danish photographer Krass Clement took three tips to Dublin, Ireland. There’s a feeling of perpetual movement and elusiveness in the pictures he took of a city on the edge of Europe.
Early in 1991 he took a one-month artist’s residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, Co Monaghan. He had never been to Ireland. “For some time I had been attracted by the idea of visiting Dublin. Then suddenly I was offered this residency… It was dark. I was staying in a small hotel – I think it was called the North Star… I was a bit scared, but also drawn to the atmosphere.”
The photographs convey “my feeling at encountering places and people in the city”.
The pictures are from Dublin by Krass Clement at The Gallery of Photography and a book of the same name.
Krass Clement was born Copenhagen in 1946 and is a self-taught photographer. He graduated as a film director from the Danish Film School in 1973, and when it became evident that his future was not to be in film he returned to the photography he had practised since his youth. He published his first photobook, Skygger af øjeblikke (Shadows of the Moment) in 1978 and since then has published more than 20 titles
“There is a certain melancholia in my work. I am quite attracted by it. After all I come from Scandinavia so it is a sort of second nature. And yes, a lot of my work can be characterised as being about loneliness. But I don’t want to get too philosophical about those aspects. I hope that the books I produce speak for themselves, and don’t require too many footnotes or conceptual analyses about the nature of reality, states of minds or the role of metaphors.”
– Krass Clement
“You may say about photos and that which interests me in my photographic narrative it’s the loss, but also the expectation. There’s an expectation, often not satisfied or fulfilled, but it’s still there and maybe experienced as both tragic and beautiful.”
– Kris Clement
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