There is a tree….

Morten Bo's opening speech for Jacob Aue Sobol's exhibition at Fotografisk Center 2nd September 2011.

There is a tree, an old knotted willow tree, it needs pruning every spring, it's branches are cut to small stubs, the crown mustn't get too large.

There is a place, a grave with thick hedge walls. Strangers are kept out and the earth kept free from frost by a blanket of snow covered spruce branches.

And there is a country where cynicism sheds its clothes and innocence bears itself. Here are misfits and injustice, here one meets the brutality of love and the pain of homelessness, it's naked, human and vulnerable. An open shirt baring it's breast as if to offer itself - here I am. A pair of too long ticklish hairs on the breasts nipples but otherwise a pale and flat chested torso. And then tenderness , a naive, sincere being - I exist.

And twosome's exist, quite and apathetic, a him and her each with handbag, like a cardboard scene of indifference, they face the darkness and I try not to approach. At the edge of the zebra crossing's oil stained asphalt they stand at the end of emptiness, twosome's back's turned.

And out of the dark a boy comes with hand held forward, a closed hand, he opens his hand and a kitten looks out, a cat with large ears filling the whole hand, is this magic? or just art.
The photographer is telling us that those you meet have kitten's in their hand, people are like that, this is what he is saying, Jacob Aue Sobol.

There are people and people seek and investigate, stick a child's finger in mummy's overblown tummy, is she pregnant or just bloated, like a fermented cow?

And a dog is studied, a sofa pillow on legs, the fur is dirty and skin ruffled, a study in form and structure. Jacob what's happening, its a pet, a sofa dog and you don't notice, see only the curve of the stomach, the ruffled skin's rhythm, the paws aesthetic in a harmonic composition, the faithful watchdog you make into a study in sausage, Jacob have you become a dog hater or just grown up?
Form becomes sculpture, fur an image, it's not a dog you're studying but an experience, it's a vision you're studying.

Another vision: wrinkled hands groping in the dark in muddy seawater teeming with blurry amoebae, hands that feel. Beautifully composed, expressive, simple, a timeless image. Yes, that's life, you don't know the bottom, you don't see the water, you don't know what's happening but you feel thats what it mean's to be a human being, you're an adult now Jacob since you're showing me this - here I am, I feel. You create time and tone in your image and comprehension, wordless comprehension that nobody has decided, it's an adult image.
Sådan, ja sådan er livet, du kender ikke bunden, du ser ikke vandet, du ved ikke, hvad der foregår, men du mærker, sådan er det at være menneske, du er blevet voksen, Jacob, siden du viser mig det. - her er jeg, jeg mærker.
Du skaber tiden i dit billede og tonen. Og meningen, den ordløse mening som ingen har besluttet, det er et voksent billede.

Man exist, he seeks and he loves.

They kiss and hug, make love and bite. Passion can't be held down or locked in, it's not decoration on twosome's grave but lovemaking, union and redemption.
If you thought that love could be formulated and defined then you're mistaken, but it exists in Jacob's stories, Brutal and demonic, painful and unintelligible.
Like arms hugging a tree trunk.

To reach the conclusion that love and it's effects are to dream and to seek beauty is to believe, this takes time and maturity.

A bump, a black bump across the road, a mound with hazard edges, bump bump, a capped controller keeping watch by an non openable door, we reduce sped quickly. Let go of the accelerator watch out for the kids, the weak, drive slowly through town, through life, he's waiting, the guard by the door, for time. and meaning.

Jacobs stories are documentary images of timeless waiting, not since Nicolai Fulsig photographed radiation in Siberia has the invisible being more visible, Jacob Aue Sobol is a true documentarian, if he was a photojournalist like Fulsig he would have suffered the same fate by being bullied out of the industry.
Like his colleague Sebastao Salgado, Jacob calls his images for registrations, because Jacob is a professional.
While working on his first large project, Sabine, he parked his camera on the mantlepiece and went seal hunting. He wanted to be a hunter and fell in love. Sabine is a tribute to the woman that gave him more than he could accommodate and therefore he had to share it with us, but with 'Stories' he is a professional.

There is a maturity in his picture selection and composition that goes beyond the overall experience, he forms, structures, selects and serves us a coherent work.

The language is well defined, musical and with a seldom nerve. He creates new paths in the photographic wilderness, getting lost and always finding his way again, the truth is that he know's what he's doing. He is still in love but now it's not his loved one he's photographing but life's hard contrasts, a world so black, so white, so bleak and so sincere, so full of tones and beauty and farewells.
Farewell to whining, to justice and the dictates of fashion. It is a farewell series, a goodbye to indifferent suburbs, to an abundance of demands for growth and the massive bombardment of news media, it is an farewell series.

A boy on his way, barefooted in wellingtons too big for him, he's reading as he walks and I follow. He is small, I am large and the light magical, unreal as a thought or memory. The concrete shining wet between lean-to's sharp shadows, but the boy passes by. And someone is approaching, a shadow, god how I love the boy.
Tenderness, silence and the dramatic composition, I fill with warmth as he guides me through the minefield, the small black haired Japanese. I understand then what it means to belong.

We are many that have good reason to say, thank you Jacob, for your Stories.

tale ved åbningen af udstillingen fortællinger i fotografisk center 2. september 2011. morten bo