On the first spread of Else Marie Hagen’s Sider av saken (Sides of the issue) we see the three words of the title, handwritten in pencil and partially erased. The eraser debris is still there, and when we turn the page we see the back of the paper – as if the imprint of the letters was pressed through. But which sides of the issue (and of what issue?) are represented here, in the shape of a sketchbook?
The handling of drawing utensils and other tools, hints of experimentation and pedagogical approaches, persist in Hagen’s work. Children and young people in particular are shaped in accordance with certain parameters. Some vaguely formative, unfinished processes are pictorialized. Conceptual analyses highlight individual components of the images. Our relationship with images – their function as criterion or standard – is ubiquitous. They shape meanings and conceptions of which we are not always conscious.
The people themselves are often absent or in the background, as executors of small actions. Written indications constitute rough sketches: he in the ocean, she in the bed. The materials are tied together, often loosely and provisionally: the hair of two girls is braided together, red threads make up axes and define a centre. The camera lens focuses and blurs gradually, centre and margin are equated. The distinct and the obscure alternate without a clear agenda: a group of people first appears almost invisible, then in full daylight. The photographic technique enables such representations, and juxtaposes them.
Paper binds it all together – quite specifically in the form of the pages of the book that mediate the images, but also as photographic material. A photograph in strips, a cut-out silhouette of a person that veers out of the page, and handwritten notes, all structure a reality. We can write it down or we can show it forth, but the always-complex picture space make the notes ephemeral and tendentious.
