himmel.hav
A few years ago, I discovered a painting in the home of my (now) parents-in-law that immediately captivated me. They had purchased it from a German artist named Ulli Peppe, who had painted it in 2008 on the beach of Quemada (Playa Quemada, Lanzarote). They brought it back home from a vacation on the island. To this day, I truly admire the minimalism of the painting, which, to me, depicts merely a suggestion of a blue sea, a pale sky, and some soft clouds.
I wondered whether I could create similar images with my camera and began experimenting with what is now known as ICM (Intentional Camera Movement). Ultimately, I found that the best approach was to mount my camera in portrait orientation on a tripod with a panoramic head, aim it vertically at the horizon, and take photos at shutter speeds between 1/40 and 1/2 second while rotating the head (the panoramic head, not my own). I opted to crop the images to a square format like the painting and experimented by positioning the horizon either below or above the horizontal centerline, depending on whether I wanted to emphasise the sea or the sky.
Eventually, this evolved into a project I named “himmel.hav”—derived from the Norwegian words for sky (himmel) and sea (hav). Most of the images were taken in Norway and on the Canary Islands between 2009 and 2022.
