26.01.18

In her series 26.01.18 photographic artist Louise Bøgelund Saugmann investigates breathing with the trees.

In her search for a place to be at peace and to fully breathe, she started regularly visiting the same forest in the Copenhagen outskirts (Pinseskoven). It is said that Pinseskoven once upon a time planted itself from seeds that flew from across the water from Sweden. Today the mythical forest is protected, as it contains and sustains animal and plant life not seen anywhere else in Denmark.
The project is an extension of a practice that Bøgelund Saugmann has developed over the years; an urge to create photographic spaces, where there is room to breathe - both concretely and in a metaphorical sense.
Bøgelund Saugmann continued to visit the forest for the next six years, and with every visit she would make 12 photographs of the same scene with trees, sitting in the same position on a rock with her medium format camera. She would then use the analogue photographic process of layering one image upon another as her method for collecting the passage of time, imagining that each individual, layered photographic piece was a breath from the forest.
During this process, she also met herself as a child; an asthmatic child who had difficulty breathing. Sometimes to such an extent that she was in bed for days unable to breathe properly.

Bøgelund Saugmann has spent countless hours on her rock in the forest as well as in her workspace scanning and layering the photographs. In the world we live in today, when everything often goes very fast, 26.01.18 offers a welcomed respite for you to slow down and breathe with the trees.

26.01.18 shows one of many days spent in the forest. Including all the layers, it contains 144 photographs.