Helén Petersen Photography

You are cordially invited to:

Galerie Depardieu

Helén Petersen – Space Below

septembre 7 @ 14 h 30 min – octobre 21 @ 18 h 30 min

GRATUIT

Helén Petersen – Space Below:

Vernissage Jeudi 7 septembre 2023 de 16h à 21h

En présence des artistes.

Exposition jusqu’au 21 octobre 2023

Du lundi au samedi de 14h30 à 18h30

Entrée libre

“A gold sphere and iridescent filaments stand out against a black background, and here again, the most curious shapes, sometimes filled with fluorescent colours, can be seen. While some of the images may evoke precious stones, and others the aurora borealis, above all they seem to come from beyond and to be an illustration of the surprises that space could hold in store”.

Helén Petersen offers us a glimpse of something never seen before. Yet her images depict reality – but on a different scale. It’s plankton observed through a microscope and captured, in all its beauty and strangeness, by the photographer’s eye. As an aesthetic decision, she opted to place the Petri dishes on a black background to better highlight the colours and light of these organisms. All that remained was to control the focus and capture the moment as the living organisms orchestrated themselves before her eyes. It’s a long-term job, carried out over more than 10 years. Time to perfect her technical skills and hone her observation skills.

“My images are not scientific,” she explains. “As the years go by, Helén Petersen will have observed a change in recurring forms. She is careful not to draw any conclusions, but stresses the importance of plankton, the starting point for the biological activity of the sea, and therefore for life. Doesn’t this make her images all the more precious and unique?

Space Below
Man has always been fascinated by space.
For many this means space above, the stellar space. But space is all around
us, and it is never empty. We can perceive it as empty but that only goes as
far as what our eyes can see.
The series “Space Below” is a result of my ongoing adventures through
working as a freelance fieldworker/photographer for the Marine ResearchInstitute of Norway.
Equipped with plankton-net, samplebottle, pipette, stereo-microscope and
camera, I am allowed to delve into a different space, a space below; the sea.
Taking home live samples of fresh seawater I lose myself to this beautiful
world of creatures, often hidden to the naked eye, with all their shapes,
colours and methods of movement.
These are not images showing them in a scientific way but rather with
wonderment to shape, form and life-forms. All images are taken through
seawater with the forms moving freely, thus also containing their colouring.
I feel humble towards these lifeforms, for they will be the last to go.

Helén Petersen