Surreal World: Martina Hoogland Ivanow Layers Fall’s Tapestrylike Pieces — THE CUT (2012)
By Martina Hoogland Ivanow and Hillary Moss
Photo: Martina Hoogland Ivanow
Affixed to Martina Hoogland Ivanow's refrigerator is a series of pictures taken by explorers trekking to the North Pole at the start of the last century. "Sadly enough, they died ... but the film was found in the seventies," the photographer told the Cut. "And because of the cold, it was still intact, so they could process it. The images are just amazing because they hold so many layers of time — being cold, being hot, probably a little bit of light leaked into them. They have so many different layers in so many different ways." Though the AnOther and Dazed & Confused contributor, who's been making pictures since she was 16 years old (she's now close to 40), said her fridge art didn't necessarily serve as a source of inspiration for this edition of Out of the Box, she certainly riffed on layering, projecting prints by her friend Martin Bergström onto brocade Stella McCartney sweaters and patterned Oscar de la Renta pieces.
Bergström, his trio of assistants-slash-models (a set of male twins and a blonde woman), and one of Ivanow's helpers spent several days shooting in her Stockholm house, a surreal experience for her 5-month-old son, who wandered into the frame at times, amused by his mom's "flower-heads." She captured them in a variety of fantastic domestic scenes that "seem recognizable, but are done with a bit of a shift: Either the camera is slightly in the wrong place, or the light is altering everything, but there's still something recognizable to connect to," like catnapping on the couch, or having a casual conversation around the living room table. However, Ivanow herself was reticent when asked about the results. "I think images have to speak for themselves," she explained. "You can talk generally about the shoot, but I think you also kill something if you talk about the images so much. For me, it's a lot about half-sentences and leaving certain things untold. Even when I have a very clear concept of what I'm doing, I always work to keep things ambiguous." Click ahead to see (and read) more of the story behind Ivanow's photos.
Fashion market editing by Jenny Kang.