Christina Leithe Hansen’s publication has its origin in a journey between Norway and Portugal, which is also formulated here as a psychologically oriented state, with cultural ramifications in the past and the unknown. The Portuguese phenomenon “saudade” involves a nostalgic, melancholy longing for someone or something beloved or absent.
The work is conceived as a letter where visual notes in the form of analog black-and-white photographs describe a journey from known to alien landscapes. Leithe Hansen has visited areas around Lisbon – fantastic gardens and forests with imported exotic plants, relics of the Portuguese seafaring tradition. A horizon line between sea and sky forms the starting point for the work. On the pages we find vegetation – palms, wilderness and pine trees – shown in sober black-and-white with a tendency towards the dark and mysterious. There are alternations between different tones in a non-linear narrative that manoeuvres its way into the botanical. Leithe Hansen is searching for moods and incarnations of longing, and this emotional impression is filtered like light through the foliage.
