#fernando pessoa
birkaç gündür nane limon içmekten içimde naneler filiz verdi, limon ağacı serpildi sanki. sesim kısık hastayken bile benliğimin derinlerindeki romantiği susturamamak, bi çeşit delilik bence
The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.
Fernando Pessao
“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd; the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”
— Fernando Pessoa,Book of Disquiet
At the heart
of my thoughts
I wasn’t I…
© Fernando Pessoa
Ph. Mstyslav Chernov, Mariupol
“How difficult to be just oneself and not see anything but the visible!”
—Fernando Pessoa,I HAVE MORE SOULS THAN ONE (transl. Jonathan Griffin)
“The great thing about this life of ours is that you can be someone different to anybody.”
—Jennifer Niven, All The Bright Places
“What is belonging?” we ask. She says, “Where loneliness ends.”
Rivers Solomon, The deep.
I don’t know how many times you’ve heard this but ”be so completely yourself that everyone else feels safe to be themselves too"
fireworks by mitski // the book of hours: love poems to god by rainer maria rilke // garden song by phoebe bridgers // the tree of life (2011, terrence malick) // “today means amen” by sierra demulder // various storms and saints by florence + the machine // amy & roger’s epic detour by morgan matson // the perks of being a wallflower (2012, stephen chbosky) // the hours by michael cunningham // the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde // the iliad by homer // letters to felice by franz kafka // chungking express (1994, wong kar-wai) // unknown // the get down (2016-2017, bar luhrmann & stephen adly guirgis) // letters to a young poet by rainer maria rilke // a burning hill by mitski // her (2013, spike jonze) // a little larger than the entire universe by fernando pessoa // the undressing by li-young lee // the brothers karamazov by fyodor dostoyevsky // night sky with exit wounds by ocean vuong // triple dog dare by lucy dacus // twin peaks: the return (2017, david lynch & mark frost)
midsommar (2019, ari aster) // taxi driver (1976, martin scorsese) // charles bukowski, source unknown // donnie darko (2001, richard kelly) // “litany in which certain things are crossed out” from crush by richard siken // little women (2019, greta gerwig) // alameda by elliott smith // book of hours: love poems to god, written by rainer maria rilke // mr robot (2015-2019, sam esmail) // “come to me, i am beautiful” by ioanna tsatsou // last night i dreamt that somebody loved me by the smiths // “visitor” by bryan washington // twin peaks: fire walk with me (1992, david lynch) // no choir by florence + the machine // hotel room (1931) & looking out (1950) & automat (1927) & morning sun (1952), painted by edward hopper // nobody by mitski // “god is burning”, from the undressing by li-young lee // in the shadow of the american dream, written by david wojnarowicz // two days, one night (2014, luc & jean-pierre dardenne) // a little life, written by hanya yanagihara // 500 days of summer (2009, mark webb) // wrong train by the psychedelic furs // the haunting of hill house (2018, mike flanagan) // demi moore by phoebe bridgers // september 24 (2010) + witch trials (2018) + every door (2018) + percy (2018), painted by philip geiger // the notebooks of malte laurids brigge, written by rainer maria rilke // the diaries of franz kafka, written by franz kafka // a little larger than the entire universe, written by fernando pessoa // one reflection (1998) + comfort mound (1999) + slide (2000) + double single (1998), painted by clive smith
“Ella dorme nell'anima mia e, a volte, si sveglia di notte e gioca con i miei sogni.”
— Fernando Pessoa
BY SANNE KABALT
How and why did you become a photographer?
ELISE SCHOUMAN - (ES) As long as I can remember I have been working on different things. I made paintings, bags from recycled material, poems and things like tables and closets. Somewhere around my tenth birthday I started to make photographs. An analog camera was my birthday present and that was the start for me to see everything with a different view, to frame the world and focus on little things such as differences in light and shadow. I never thought that I would become an artist or photographer. I always wanted to be somebody who can change the world; I wanted to do something good for the world. So I started to study social work. After two years and lots of frustration I made the choice to change my study. I think it is the best choice of my life to have studied at the art academy.
Tell us about your educational path. What are your best memories of your studies? What was your relationship with photography at that time?
ES - My best memories are of the moments when we talked about photography, about the image itself. And it was great to make lots of work, often in a short period of time. The students around me made me focus on photography only. The important thing is that you have enough ideas and the spirit to improve yourself and to try to find the best in yourself.
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about going to school again, following a new course and learning new things to get better at what I do and get more responses from other people, more critical opinions, more of everything.
© Elise Schouman, from the series ‘Nothing is made to last forever’, dried butterfly 2012
Is there any teacher or fellow artist that has allowed you to better understand your work?
ES - Artist and teacher Petra Stavast was a very important person for me during my time at the academy, she made me look at my work in a critical way. Another teacher and also a great artist, Jan Adriaans, helped me to learn to create chaos and to explore my own limits. From that chaos I found a new starting point, a blank slate for me as an artist. This has brought me to many discoveries.
How would you describe your work in general? What kind of photographer are you?
ES - I am a maker, a creator. It always starts with little things, for example a shadow, a frown on somebody’s face. Words that I read in books or just see on the way back home. This can all trigger a story, or a thought to make something with. The story starts with a reaction and slowly I will build the walls and frames of a new work. I am an observer. I’m trying to understand the things around me. I’m trying to confuse the things around me. My photographs are poetic. The last few years I’ve been dealing with questions on finiteness and infinity. I really like the transience of things. Things will get ruined; white paper will get yellow in the sun after a while. And there is also an attraction to nature in my photographs; the overwhelming power of nature is something that affects me.
© Elise Schouman, from the series ‘Verdicht’ (‘Fiction’), 2014
When I look at your work a quick summary of what I see would be: humans relating to nature. Is it your aim to make the viewer think about this relationship?
ES - The relationship between men and nature is exiting for me; there is something dishonest to it. Humans think they are smarter than everything else on earth, but I think this isn’t true. This thought is present in my work, but I wouldn’t want to impose this on the viewer.
Lately I was thinking; what if the universe decided that men destroys and poisons their planet. Then the universe reacts with natural disasters to show men their rightful place within the universe. I feel very connected to nature. It gives me a very magical and safe feeling. A tree will be never the same; the air is the energy that gives me most ideas.
Your work has always been poetic. In recent years you have also started to write poems and combine words with images. Can you tell us about this development and how it works for you?
ES - By writing I get the feeling that I can give my thoughts a home. Since I was young I have been writing in diaries and writing little poems. For a long time I did all this writing only for myself, which is what you do with a diary; it was just a way to order my thoughts. At the moment it takes up more space in my work as an artist. I combine image with text and investigate their relation with each other.
On the sky terrace calls the cuckoo
Distant streams rustle without interruptionOn the edges, pious berries go astray
They will always find waterHigh, along the ravine, white wolves are running
Where they live, you’ll never comeThey find their way through the pure land
In the meters tall trees, the wind sighs.Elise Schouman, Borsec, May 2014
© Elise Schouman, from the series ‘Vergeet betekenis’ (‘Forgot meaning’), 2011
In your poems and texts you often suggest what we see is not real, an imagined reality. Would you prefer the viewer to see your work as truth or as fiction?
ES - I think there is no real truth, which also means that everything is the truth, or could be. The same goes for my photography; it is not the truth but it could be the truth. For me it is often the truth, and perhaps some people who read the poems may find the truth there.
I always try to get a better grip on what I actually write. Something that began with just a couple of words, with a very small idea or only just one image, grows to something bigger. By gathering information, texts and images, you create a fertile soil where beautiful things can sprout.
You have made a body of work during a residency in Borsec, Romania. Can you tell us about the residency and your work there?
ES - A place, a beautiful place deep in the forests nestled between the mountains of Romania, that provides space for artists and writers to work. I spent two weeks there, walking through the woods, climbing the mountains. I had an encounter there. An encounter with myself, with nature and with the people who were not there, but who’s absence was visibly present. This encounter I photographed. The beginning of the unknown.
© Elise Schouman, from the series ‘An encounter’, 2014
Can you give us an insight in your day-to-day working life? Do you spend most of your time in your studio or out photographing or doing other things? Do you have any rituals that help you to be creative and productive?
Every week I have three days to work on my photography, writing and so on. These days I like to start early, first with everything that has to be done on the computer, like writing, contacts and photo editing. In the course of the day I go out and I walk often, or I take the bike and I let the wind order all my thoughts, until everything has a place. Then I come back and usually write. Ideas often come through movement, by looking, by forgetting that you want to think of something; that brings out the best ideas.
In your opinion, what is the hardest part about being a photographer? And what is the best part?
The best thing is that you get the possibility to develop your creative mind. From there you can create whatever you want. It is important to make time to empty your mind in order to create. This, for me, is freedom.
The hardest thing is that what you create is really personal. To show the depths of your inner being can be quite scary, like being naked on a stage. But I think when you show your work to the world and people have an opinion about it, it also learns you to grow as an artist.
Can you recommend a book, movie or exhibition that has been a source of inspiration to you?
The movie ‘De Zee die Denkt’ (The Sea that Thinks), is one of the best movies I have seen. The film revolves around the question ‘who are you?’; a really interesting question with more depth than it seems at first. Also the narrow bridge between what is real and what is illusion makes you look at the world slight differently.
Poems by Fernando Pessoa are a great inspiration for me.
Artists Wolfgang Tillmans and Gerard Richter are artists who made a great impression on me. I recently saw their work in an exhibition in Weserburg, a museum for modern art in Bremen. The title of the exhibition was ‘Land in sicht’, it was a really good combination of different artists. It was all about landscape, in a realistic way and also in a really abstract way. It was a great inspiration for me because of the tension between nature and the artist, between nature and the way you look at nature.
What projects are you currently working on and what are your plans for the future?
At the moment I am starting a project tilted ‘A Dream’. The dream is a window through which you can take a look into another world that in the normal waking consciousness is not accessible. In the future I want to write even more, to try to get better at it. Maybe someday I will write a book. I am always busy with little projects, such as a self-built camera, which sometimes grow into bigger projects. That’s what I like to do best.
Je serai toujours celui qui attendait qu’on lui ouvrît la porte au pied d’un mur sans porte
Fernando Pessoa, Bureau de tabac
“Olduğum şeyle olmadığım şey arasında, hayal ettiğim şeyle hayatın beni yaptığı şey arasında bir boşluğum.”
-Fernando Pessoa
“I failed life even before I had lived it, because even as I dreamed it, I failed to see its appeal. All I felt was the weariness of dreams, and then I was filled with a final, false sensation, as if I had reached the end of an infinite road. I overflowed the bounds of myself although quite where I don’t know, and there I lay stagnant and useless. I am some thing that I once was. I cannot find myself when I feel and if I go looking for myself, I don’t know who it is looking for me. A sense of utter tedium saps my energy. I feel like an exile from my own soul.
I watch myself, I am a witness to myself. My feelings parade past some unrecognizable gaze of mine like things external. Everything about me bores me. Everything, right down to its mysterious roots, has taken on the color of my tedium.
The flowers the Hours gave me were already past their best. All I can do now is slowly pick off the petals, a process grown more complex with the years.
I find the slightest action impossible, as if it were some heroic deed. The mere thought of making the smallest gesture weighs on me as if it were something I was actually considering doing.
I aspire to nothing. Life wounds me. I feel uncomfortable where I am and uncomfortable where I think I could be.
The ideal would be to undertake no more action than the false action of a fountain-rising only to fall in the same place, glittering pointlessly in the sunlight and making a noise in the silence of the night that would set any dreamer dreaming of rivers, an absent smile on his lips.”
