Hans Christian Andersen. When reading his stories and fairy tales, you can clearly perceive his somehow distracted style which vaguely reminds one of improvised scat music. As if you were turning a diamond with a million reflective facets in your hand. Andersen starts writing a sentence with a certain intention ending it with a different one, freely oscillating between direct speech and descriptions he keeps driving the narrative forward, incessantly provoking imaginative projections of the particular scenes. The goal of the project was to understand and subsequently visually express Andersen’s almost mosaic-like view of the surrounding world.
The individual shots were taken in Luhačovice, Štramberk, Štiřín, Copenhagen, Odense, Helsingør and Bisserup. On the one hand, I was looking for the emotion from the chosen tales in the countryside, and on the other hand, I followed addresses where Andersen had stayed for longer periods of time and which could have influenced him. I was greatly impressed by the Nyhavn port in Copenhagen where Andersen successively lived at three different addresses. The basis of the project originated between Dec 28th, 2016 and April 30th, 2017.
The collection was awarded 2nd place at the MIFA – Moscow International Photo Awards – in 2017 and 3rd place at the IPA – Los Angeles International Photography Awards – 2017.
The project was first exhibited at the Gallery of the Art Critics (Galerie kritiků) in Prague between
Dec 21st, 2017 and Jan 14th, 2018.