photography | eirians

I spent some days out on the streets of Stockholm this fall, photographing people and asking them questions. It turned into an exhibition. Me and my friend hung our art in a bookstore in the city, run by people we know. I never really wrote about it here, so well. Now I am.

When I say that it turned into an exhibition, it’s not quite true. We had an exhibition date set quite early, and I had no art. I had to make something. And I didn’t want to bring a random collection of my paintings, without any coherent theme. So I made something in response to the art my friend was going to show.

She’d been painting florals on taped together bible pages. On the theme of what’s brittle, and what’s eternal. Inspired by the book of Isaiah:
“A voice says, “Cry out.”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
“All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field..”

It’s about what’s futile, but also about what’s important. So I thought, what words matter? Out of all the things we say, what lasts? I photographed people on the street and asked them:

“What’s the most important thing you’ve ever said?”

Here are a couple of answers.

”I love you. When I say it to my wife and my kids. It’s not so often that I say it. I’m trying to think when was the first time… probably when she was my wife to be. When I knew that it was her. With the kids it’s different, I probably haven’t said it as often.”

The more he talked, the more he seemed to get into a bit of a crisis about whether he actually had said I love you to his kids. It was a bit funny. Maybe he went home and told them. He was great to talk to, and so good to photograph, look at that side profile.

“Get lost.”

This woman knew exactly what she was going to answer. Usually people are a bit overwhelmed, the most important thing you’ve ever said, it’s a big question. But not this woman. She was nodding and had an answer ready before I even finished talking. “Get lost. That’s the most important thing,” she said.
I asked something more about it, what made her say it. She said that it was to someone who made her life miserable. That it was survival instinct. She spoke about it very bluntly, in short, confident sentences. There’s something in her posture too, I think. You can see that she knew her answer. Back straight.

I wrote everyone’s answer on the back of their portraits, and hung them in the middle of the room, so that people could walk around and read.

(And now you’ve seen some of it, so you’ve basically been to our exhibition, virtually, yey!)

Thessaloniki. November. Down by the ocean the restaurants were pleasantly empty after the summer crowds had left, and you could find a table to have a cheap glass of wine and look straight out at the ocean. Mount Olympus was right there, the pale shape of it half hidden behind the clouds.

We went hiking, not up Mount Olympus, but by some random mountains a bus ride away. We could see Mount Athos across the water, which is an autonomous region where women are not allowed. And they haven’t been, for like a thousand years. The only people who live there are the monks in the monasteries on the mountain.

But we hiked on our little peninsula, next to it, past olive trees and places of prayer. We were a bit frustrated, me and my friend I was traveling with. That feeling you sometimes get when you travel — like you want to find something. Like you’re there for a purpose, but you don’t know what it could be. Hiking helped. And the bus ride there helped, a couple of hours of just listening to music and seeing the landscape pass by.