FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Tine Poppe
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Tine Poppe, a Norwegian fine-art photographer known for her expressive use of flowers and the natural world to explore beauty, fragility, and mortality, while also addressing broader social, political, existential, and environmental concerns.
You can visit Tine's website here.
In photography, it's so difficult to do something different that hasn't been done before or doesn't look like somebody else's work. So you have to really go into your own quirky world, I think.
SPEAKER_01This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, a quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is today's host, W. Scott Olson, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_02Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olson. And you know what, folks, I'm sure we have all had this experience. The other day, I'm looking at a picture. I think, oh, that's a pretty picture. Um, you know, it's got great composition, it's got great light, and I'm ready to go on to the next one, but I don't. Um something is just sort of preventing me from going on. And I start looking at the picture more deeply. I start, oh my, look at this. Um, there's all sorts of thematic contrasts, color use, lighting, and not only is the technical bit of it absolutely brilliant, the emotional, the intellectual, the philosophical content is uh to use a term, it's just arresting. You look at this image and you think, oh my God, not only is there the technical brilliance, there is a message here that is reaching out and grabbing my head and my heart. And I am not gonna go on to the next picture uh until I've spent some time figuring out what this image is doing to my sense of participation in the universe. Uh, in other words, I was looking at a picture by Tina Poppy. Tina is a photographer living over in Oslo. Uh, she her work, according to her website, you know, focuses on bringing attention to social, political, existential, and environmental issues through art and documentary photography. She's been published all over the place, exhibited all over the place. She's been her work's been purchased by corporate and government art collections in Norway and elsewhere. Uh, she won the IPE Royal Royal Photographic Society Awards, Sony World Photography Awards, the PX3 Paris Prize, Lens Culture, Critics Choice. It just goes on. Um, there's all sorts of stuff in here. She's been in the Atlantic, The Guardian, National Geographic. Uh, she's been in Photographic Tit. I think I just botched the pronunciation of that. Sorry. The Royal Photographic Society Journal, Lens Scratch. Um, she also won, work on my pronunciation here again, Photograph Prisian. I'm gonna have to tell me in a second how badly I botched that, which is Norway's highest. There is no higher, more distinguished uh photography prize in Norway. And you start digging into her work, not only is it's her current uh work that she's you know known for now, um, really arresting, but you start going back in time and you think, oh, something here is rising to the point of being not only a damn good photographer, but an important voice for everything having to do uh with conservation, with social responsibility. It's the kind of very best work that I think photography can achieve. Tino, welcome to the podcast today. How are you doing?
SPEAKER_00Oh, fine, thank you. And thank you for inviting me. I'm honored.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, your work really, really is uh extraordinary. And we're gonna get it in into some of your series, and we're gonna get into all that kind of stuff in just a second ago. Um, but I do love origin stories. I do love knowing how people got into photography. And you began your professional career as a graphic designer, you know, designing covers for novels and stuff like that. Yeah. Um and then just one day, you know, because it was Tuesday, your brother gave you a camera. Um I mean, tell me how you made the leap from designing novel covers to pressing a shutter release.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, actually, you know, my my brother was a professional photographer, and um he started early on. And uh, I never even uh and all his friends were like really great photographers, so I never even thought about like competing with them. But um but uh as a graphic designer, you you do get like photographers come and show their work. And um sometimes I was like thinking, oh, maybe I could do this, you know, maybe I could even do it better.
SPEAKER_02And um, no, I I have to ask, older brother or younger brother?
SPEAKER_00He is younger than me, three years old.
SPEAKER_02Well then of course you can do it better than he can.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, but you know, no, not his work, because I mean he he actually left photography to study um film direction. He's a director now, making movies. But uh the place where I was working, like it was like 25 years ago. Um, I was working as a graphic designer and uh and they had this thing that they they we collected this part of money, uh if we earned a lot of money, and they would spend it on things that would make us better at something. Uh so um we made courses in whatever you wanted. And uh I um was asked if I wanted to like do something, and I said, why not photography? And uh that's how it started.
SPEAKER_02Do you remember how what your first assignment was? In in school, that is, not not not commercially.
SPEAKER_00Uh I never went to photography school.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I thought you said I thought I read that you signed up for a class somewhere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, oh yeah, that was yeah, it was a class, but it was just like 10 days.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00We went to Italy with uh this great uh Norwegian photographer who was like our teacher. Uh I can't remember what actually made it click, but uh I was uh after those 10 days, I was suddenly like hooked. I I loved it.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay. Well that that that leads me to two things. Um, first of all, you you have a you have a great uh line in another interview. You know, when you were designing covers for novels, you said the practice of minimizing the content of a whole novel into one frame became really important for you as a photographer. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about what what how do how do you understand that transition?
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, working as a graphic designer, you um I don't know, it just comes naturally after a while because you have to make suggestions for the uh for the publishing companies. And then it's not very highly paid, so uh so you don't want to make like too many suggestions. So uh so it's it's practice really. I think it comes with uh doing it a lot of times. So it's like when I when I read the book, I would be like thinking, oh, this is really great for the whole content. You know, I would look for that.
SPEAKER_02It it it it strikes me that if you read a really rich, you know, wonderful novel, th that's an almost impossible task to design a cover that is going to be uh that's going to imply the content of the novel, that's going to imply the tone of the novel. Um it seems to me that there's a direct translation there into composition, into lighting, to an understanding of foreground and background. Do you see that parallel?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes, I do. It's uh, you know, when you try to pick that one uh image for the whole novel, it's uh it's a lot about the atmosphere. It's a lot about uh how um how hard is this book to read? You know, is this a very light novel for everybody, or is it like more uh intellectual stuff? There are so many degrees where you play with the colors and the darkness and uh um yeah, that's just how it is. And you and I I don't know, it's sort of uh intuition, uh, you know, when you get used to it.
SPEAKER_02You you say you were hooked. Were you hooked by the the being out in the field, you know, carrying the camera on? Were you hooked by post-processing, by all of it?
SPEAKER_00All of it. You know, as um as I started doing more photography, uh I enjoy the whole process. I enjoy being out there and how it's like given me the possibility to meet so many people and go to so many places and sort of uh coming into people's lives that I'd otherwise never be able to or never even think of. Um so it gives you such a wide perspective, you know, on everything.
SPEAKER_02Being able to you've you've got a real I mean, some of your work is you know so very much um field-oriented, and you've got a street photography award, but a lot of your work is really, really highly composed studio work uh as well. Do you see that as as yin and yang? Is it been an evolution? Uh how do you approach either side?
SPEAKER_00Well, um, you know, when you've been doing photography and uh for many years you like you feel you have uh not done it all, but uh I'm always looking for new ways to do it. And other photographers I'm also always looking for their approach. Is there a different way of doing it that I haven't seen before? And I'm very much into like developing the way I make my photographs. But what happened was like seven years ago I became really ill. I couldn't like walk out on my camera anymore and I couldn't do commercial assignments. But I am um like hooked on photography, so I then started like setting up a studio so that I could make photographs inside without having to, you know, I was feeling really I was actually and they gave me like one year to live. Oh my heavens. Yeah, I had like stage four cancer and it had spread and uh but I didn't believe uh I didn't believe it was the end.
SPEAKER_02Good.
SPEAKER_00Even if they told me, you know, this is it, but I didn't believe it was. And I I got up every morning and I planned like what can I photograph today um just within my house. And I would of course uh flowers was uh an easy thing to get hold of and didn't take up much space. So that's what I started like seriously with the flowers. And um I'm still uh still onto that. I'm developing, you know, how I can do that in studio and maybe combine it with outside, or uh yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like this is on your on your Instagram page, talking about you know the the flowers and stuff, uh you you you've got just a a really i intriguing uh statement here. You say through the lens of still life photography, I intend to evoke both a sense of nostalgia and discomfort.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Tell me about that.
SPEAKER_00Well, I I think for uh uh uh actually for me like um it's uh it makes a photograph more compelling, and and uh I also I have like a serious uh message with all my work.
SPEAKER_02For the last years it's been like the environmental issue, and um I like to the discomfort makes you feel a bit uneasy and uh well I I can't explain it, but um that I this is what I was getting at with the intro, though, because you know, I f when I came upon one of your flower pictures, my first response was, oh, that's beautiful. But it then, you know, a microsecond later, it was beautiful and a little, you know, oh there's something else going on here. Yeah, there was that dissonance. There was that, you know, the discomfort to me is is a um a harder word than my own response to how I would describe it. Um but it was it was not just, oh, this is pretty, you know, set it on your table and smile. There was a story, there, there was a message being uh brought through there. And you've got um, or I shouldn't say you've got the planet has a bit of a problem with fresh flowers being delivered to me here in the middle of North Dakota that were grown in some kind of odd w environment, you know, in Holland or in Africa.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I mean tell me tell me what the message is that you're trying to get across with these beautiful, discomforting images.
SPEAKER_00Well, the actual message is that it's very bad for the planet, for the environment. And we buy these beautiful flowers in our local flower shop and uh but without thinking about the fact that they have been traveling maybe across the globe almost. And then we did we have like keep it for a few days and we toss it away, which I think is uh really terrible. It's this has all got to do with uh money, of course. It's actually cheaper to buy the ones from Africa than the local uh greenhouses. Um and I am of course very much against this. We have to do whatever we can, you know, to save the planet. This industry is not helping at all. I would like to go back to what you said about the discomfort, because this actually this series came by uh by accident because I had listened to this uh TED talk, uh which was called uh I can't remember now, but it actually informed me about what's happening actually with uh this industry. Uh I was going to check the light for this rose or whatever I was photographing, and at the back of the rose I had uh a uh friend uh photography from one of my trips uh around the world somewhere. It was just like a landscape. And in um just checking the light for this flower with the landscape in the back, I wasn't even thinking about that. I was like and I saw the result and I was like, oh, this is pretty interesting. Uh it actually looks like the flowers in that landscape. Uh so then I thought uh why not uh look into this? Because I had on my hard disk so many landscapes uh from all around the place, which I always like, you know, you you take the picture and you don't know what you're gonna use it for, and I I found it like not good enough, not interesting enough to use on its own. Uh so that made me like go through my hard disks and look for images, and I tried uh I had been in Malawi in Africa on working for the Norwegian Development Fund like maybe 10 years ago, and uh that's when I really got into the environmental issues because these people were they had nothing living out you know in the little villages and they could tell me more about climate change than I knew. So I was really like taken aback and uh I started looking for pictures from Malawi because I knew that since I was there ten years ago, the the landscape had changed because of uh what do you call it, uh floods, yeah, and all this. So I thought like looking at this picture, I wonder how this landscape looks like today. Uh maybe that's what I should use. I should like use uh landscapes that are probably changed today. It doesn't look the same anymore.
SPEAKER_02When you go out, do you have a theme, do you have uh an argument in mind? Or do you mostly you take pictures and then discover the argument from the material you've gathered?
SPEAKER_00And uh the second one, usually. Yeah, but it depends. You know, when I do studio work, of course I'm uh I know what I want. But you know, when you go outside with a camera, it's uh something catches your eye and you just can't not take the picture. So I suppose a lot of photographers have their hard disks full of uh pictures like that. You know, it's yeah. So uh and I enjoy going through my hard disks and and see if there is something I can use, like or some often you know, if uh you've uh uploaded an image that's uh all wrong, or it's like been something is wrong about it, but going back to it, it actually can be the seed to something interesting. You can say, like that mistake was interesting. Could I do this on purpose? You know what I mean. Like part by accident.
SPEAKER_02I think there's an old cliche among musicians that if you play a bad note, you should play it again immediately so everyone thinks you did it on purpose.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's you know, in photography, it's so difficult to do something different that hasn't been done before or doesn't look like somebody else's work. Um so you have to really go into your own quirky world, I think.
SPEAKER_01Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you're enjoying today's episode. The very fact that you are listening to this podcast suggests that photography means a lot to you. And if that's the case, you might want to have a look at Frames Quarterly Printed Photography magazine. We truly believe that excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit readframes.com to find out more about our publication and use the coupon code podcast to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new Frames magazine subscription. And now back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_02You know, you you spent a lot of time you know working for um advertising and stuff like that. Yeah. Um, but then but then when you sort of started breaking out from that, you you uh you did drug addicts, you did asylum seekers and refugees, uh, you've got the Exit Wonderland project. Yeah. Um these all had to be thematically intentional.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they were, of course.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so when you went out to do, say, the addicts or the refugees, what were you trying to do? Just document their plight? Were you trying to say something larger or different?
SPEAKER_00Uh it started out just documenting. I was documenting uh a friend was making a book about uh like the children asylum seekers. Uh and she said, Would you like to do the portraits for that book? And I said, Yes, of course I will. I never I didn't know very much about it. But getting to know these families, of course, I learned how the system was, and to me that was terrible, and I thought, like, oh, this can't be true, you know, it must be a big mistake. We can't treat people like this. And um, but of course it wasn't a mistake, and this is the way people are treated. And I thought, like, uh, well, I sometimes get some attention through my pictures, so I should uh like uh do more of this. Maybe it will talk to someone, uh maybe two people, three people. Who knows? I just wanted to like uh get people's attention on this matter. Tell them how something really unfair was going on, something terrible, and we had to fix it. So that was my naive intention in the beginning.
SPEAKER_02And it works. Yes, I mean I mean you it might be naive, but come on, people people see the pictures, you change their their head and their heart.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I hope so. Yeah, I hope so, you know, and um but uh there are different sides to this going into people's uh lives, and uh they get hope that I can change things for them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which uh very rarely I can. And you get so invested, you know, in these uh in these stories. Uh really it takes over. I'm not like a professional, like a surgeon or a doctor who's used to people dying uh and then going back to your family and watching TV, if you know what I mean. So to me, I like took everything in. I was uh for several years, I was just like I was so angry, you know, and so sad.
SPEAKER_02So So you do have that that short video. Of the portrait that you did, and then the gentleman died six months after tr trying to get um legal status in the country. The it it is heartbreaking. Um is this about the time in your career that you did Exit Wonderland?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes, it is.
SPEAKER_02Okay, tell tell me how that idea came out came about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because that was like um not intentional. I had Really I had been doing my second road trip in the US and um out there in the desert, you know. I I was just like taking pictures because it was uh amazingly beautiful and haunting and all that. And um when I got back, I'm pretty interested in politics everywhere.
SPEAKER_02Um would never would never have known that, Tina.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and you know, as I was out there in the desert taking these pictures, I was sometimes thinking, like, what if somebody comes along here and has a gun and shoots me just to take my equipment?
SPEAKER_02That's a pleasant thought, okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but I mean that that could probably not happen in Norway, but for a Norwegian going to the US, we find it terrifying that people have like are carrying guns.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so you probably don't think about it, but we do. And especially if I have very expensive equipment and people have very little money and are desperate, you know, you never know. But coming back to Norway and looking at the the images and remembering like my um my state of mind when I was out there, I get like this push warning on my phone, and uh it was in the middle of the night, and it said that Donald Trump was elected the presidential candidate for the Republicans. And I knew you uh you I knew about Donald Trump and it gave me like really goosebumps. I was I was terrified. So um uh I hope I'm not saying anything wrong politically here.
SPEAKER_02Go for it. I'm I'm on your side here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so um so I thought like I started just like playing with one of these images, and you know the sky in Nevada, for example, in the middle of the day, it's so dark blue. It's like it's got nothing but blue in it. And I just turned the blue, I took away the blue, like for the Democrats. And the sky is done black, it would usually not do that, you know. With if I the sky in Norway, if I try to do the same, it doesn't work. It only worked with these pictures from the desert. And I thought, this is amazing, this looks like a film set. Like I have actually been in the desert and uh did like uh artificial lighting on the whole place. Um so I yeah, that's how it came about.
SPEAKER_02So no way, okay. I I was gonna ask you about the sky in this series, but you so you just bring down the blue slider, but you've got lights with you? These this isn't just ambient natural light?
SPEAKER_00Uh I I had my flash, but I only used it like occasionally.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um you have beautiful pictures of landscape and and plants and rocks, you know, the occasional trailer, but then you've also got a quote by Trump at the bottom uh of every image. And that they are not uh peaceful quotes. No. Um tell tell me what you're going for with the interplay between and the quotes, of course, are not describing the beauty of the natural world. Um, what are you going for with that juxtaposition there?
SPEAKER_00Well, if you look at the images, it kind of looks like the end of the world.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes, it does.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And um and along with the quotes, um, which you know, the quotes are uh there are so many quotes defined by Trump that are really shocking. So I have to start, you know, picking. And um I I thought it was an interesting contrast to the picture.
SPEAKER_02Well, it it does really change the the way you engage with the picture. Um it it it becomes something completely different than just a landscape picture.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because you know, and like the president of the United States, he's kind of the he's the king on the world, you know. He decides all our fates virtually. So it's a pretty powerful stuff. Who's ruling your country? Yeah. And that's uh yeah. So that's what I wanted to.
SPEAKER_02You know, on your website, by the way, if everyone, this is a magnificent website. You got to get there this afternoon, if not earlier. Um, which series came right after that?
SPEAKER_00Uh I can't remember. I don't have like all my series on my website. Well, get to it. Come on.
SPEAKER_02Um, there's deflowered, there's white's not a color, there's no man's land. Uh, and I'm thinking these are all in the pre-flowered uh part of your career.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. They are. Well, I have done flowers, but that was uh only a little.
SPEAKER_02You say, you know, in another interview, you say to add some lightness to my practice, I started experimenting with shooting wildflowers. Yeah. Um, you know, micro. We'll get to the Atlantic article in in a second. But were you were you feeling too down on yourself? Or why were you looking to add some lightness to your practice?
SPEAKER_00Oh, that was because of my work with the refugees. That really made me, as I said earlier, angry, depressed, uh, heartbroken. And then to do something totally different, I uh I was given this uh fantastic lens. I was really, really wide, and um I was asked if I could like take some pictures with this. And I did. I would just went outside with uh there was a big park, and I took some pictures of the flowers, and I um you can go really close to them, and you can I had I think I had a flash on my camera, and then I was just like playing about, which I often do. I something is is like so by coincidence, and I tried to to shoot from uh I tried to put my camera down. I also had this new app, I think, that I could remotely like shoot. And I thought, is this gonna work if I put the camera on the ground, like facing upwards? Um because I could do that with such a wide angle, you know, and still like a picture. Uh so then I started this uh series called uh botanical perceptions because because I realized that with this lens and shooting that way, you could like look into a world that we don't usually do. It's like this childish uh Wonderland, you know, like Alice in Wonderland, you know, where you feel very small and the flowers are enormous above you. Uh so I did that. I've yeah, that this way of shooting I've been doing for many years.
SPEAKER_02Like Is Is that what got you the piece in the Atlantic?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_02Okay, t tell everyone what that was all about, because that is so cool.
SPEAKER_00You know, I can't actually remember. I can't remember what English is what it was. I think it was like uh some insects, and I can I can't remember, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what what what does the ground look like from an insect's point of view? So wide angle, ground level. Yeah um that that that had to be even though you don't remember it, that had to be a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it it's it, but you know, some when you do the pictures this way, you don't like you don't see I I don't see what I shoot. Because the camera is like uh I'm holding my camera almost to the ground and upwards, and then pointing my flash. Uh so I I have a a little bit of look when I'm photographing just to check like the exposure, but I don't I don't actually see what I'm shooting until I open it on my Mac when I get back. And that's like wonderful because there are insects and there are like what so much appearing, you know, that I didn't actually know I was shooting.
SPEAKER_02Oh man, if if if I did that, I would be more frustrated than not, because I'd open it up on the computer and I'd think, damn, if I'd only been six inches to the left, or if I've if I'd only tilted, you know, I would have seen all the things I I would have corrected had I been able to see through the viewfinder.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I do have a lot of those images are just thrown to the bin.
SPEAKER_02I um so okay. Uh right now, um the Gilded Lilies project is is you know one that a lot of people are gonna um associate with your name first. Yeah. Um very staged, very art-directed, very composed. Yeah. Um tell me, I mean, did this just happen, you know, oh my God, look, I've got all these shots, let me put them in a group, or did you set out on a direction saying I'm going hardcore studio elegance here?
SPEAKER_00Um well, a little bit of both. Okay. I really enjoyed shooting it. You know, that's for me when I make um work, the most important thing is that I enjoy making it. I like I'm enjoying myself while I make it. And I thought this was really I loved it. Uh so um I just went out and made more and more. And I have to say this thing about these particular flowers because I never photographed them when they were fresh. I waited till they started tilting a bit. And to me, you know, I could find so many uh expressions, and this probably has to do with doing these uh covers for novels and things.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00You know, how do you express grief, sadness, whatever? I think I in my mind, I think I could make uh illustrate uh like a rape with flowers. You know what I mean? You can I mean they express so many human emotions if you look for it. You know, it can be joyful, it can be kissing, it can be uh whatever. Um it sounds probably crazy, but uh I get into a relationship with the flowers, you know, when I when they are um in my studio and I, you know, they are there for some days, and I look at how they tilt a little bit, and uh yeah, it's probably me just being crazy, but uh boy, it's a good crazy if it is.
SPEAKER_02So Tina, this is one of the more remarkable pictures, uh at least in in terms of grabbing my heart. It it is lonely, it is also elegant, it is soft, and yet it has that nostalgia uh and discomfort. Walk me through the the creation of this image, both aesthetically but also technically in the in the studio.
SPEAKER_00Uh well technically I place this uh printed background up and I stage the flowers in front of it. You know, a shoot like this, I can spend maybe maybe it'll take me half an hour, or it might take like four or five hours actually.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Okay.
SPEAKER_00I start composing and looking through my lens, and maybe I don't shoot one single frame before it is like an hour, or before I feel like uh I'm getting somewhere. So you know I wanted to have the chaos. You see the white flowers? They are sort of chaotic going in all these directions because I I like uh having emotion in my picture, even if it's in studio. I like the flowers dancing a bit or whatever. So it's it's all like me and my uh stomach feeling actually. Yeah, so so it but people don't realize how long it takes. At least until I'm satisfied or think I have something.
SPEAKER_02I I would imagine the flower arranging takes you know more time than setting up the lights.
SPEAKER_00Well, setting up the lights is that takes no time. It's the flower arranging that takes time.
SPEAKER_02Tell me about the tell me about the use of the backgrounds, because you know, in this series, that's one of the things that one of the hallmarks here that you have these printed or painted or or backgrounds behind the scenes. Are these things that you've bought specifically for the image? You just have 700 of them in a closet and you pick one. I mean, how do you go about choosing that level of both content and then also definition?
SPEAKER_00Uh well, it's you as you can see, they're all a bit foggy, uh, all backgrounds, because that's um it works better, actually. It's uh um and I am uh very fortunate to have uh very large printer, so I can print the images myself. Uh so um so are are the backgrounds your images? Yeah, usually.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay, wonderful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that's like the backgrounds I told you, the landscapes that I thought were not interesting enough on their own. Uh yeah. So um yeah, that's how it goes about. Takes hours, and um, you know, the the the flowers they can't stay up for long. And so I put little bit of uh things that has water in it. And um yeah, it's it's very it's a hard concentration doing this.
SPEAKER_02When I first looked at them, I was trying to figure out uh a comparative style description. Um and the first thing that came to mind were Audubon paintings, you know, because of the attention to detail, but his paintings are also flat. Um you you've got a real depth, you know, foreground to background. You you've got a tremendous depth to these images.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um the detail, though, is remarkable.
SPEAKER_00Um I would interesting to have full depths.
SPEAKER_02People have been responding to this collection fairly well, wouldn't you say?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they have. I'm very happy about that. But it's I feel that like uh it's always when you enjoy making something, it usually gives somebody else joy as well to look at it.
SPEAKER_02Do you think do you think most people clue into the discomfort bit a little bit? You know, and they say there's a message here versus just you know this is a pretty flower?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I think so that they see discomfort. Because this is like uh, you know, if uh if climate change made everything like shut down and you couldn't go out and take similar photographs to these anymore, you would have to do it the way I did it in the studio. I had this in my mind as well, you know? It's uh what are we going to do the day it gets too hot or it gets like whatever reason you can't go out and take shoot photographs like this? You would have to do it the way I do just now. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02Yes, I do. You know, I I think you've probably one of your best titles for series on here. Um it's Remnants of Happy Endings. That idea, I mean, forget, forget the images are all magnificent, but remnants of happy endings really does describe an awful lot of your style in terms of creating content with these flowers. Yeah, there is that nostalgia and that sense of loss and the sense of wanting to regain. It's just marvelously complex.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, that's yeah, that's like a red uh line bit through my work, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. I I you know, both, you know, and and the non-flowers as well. If you go back to the desert or the portraits and stuff, um that that that that's that's the definition there. What are you working on now, Tina?
SPEAKER_00Uh well, uh just now I am uh working on um I've been t shooting in the mountains uh uh flowers again, but I have uh tried to make it different from my earlier work, and uh I have been shooting them like it looks like it's moonlight, but it's not actually. It's just the way I uh use my flash. It's like work done out in the field. Uh and it's about wildflowers, and um it's about keeping our wildflowers instead of taking them away, you know, because of the bees and insects and all this we have to take care of. Uh so yeah, that's this summer's theme. But uh and I've been working on I there is this hospital that's ordered a lot of my work, and so I've been doing like working on this this summer. But uh photography is just like in the summer, I always uh I try to shoot a lot uh because of my flowers theme, and uh and uh so I'm just like collecting things to have things to work with.
SPEAKER_02Well, when when the snow comes, you'll you'll have a pleasant winter to getting all this stuff put back together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right. That's how it works.
SPEAKER_02Well, well, Tina, I mean when you're wandering around the Norwegian mountains, if you need a personal assistant, just please please give me a call.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know, I look crazy, you know, when I do my photography there. Because I'm like bending over with my flash, uh, and uh then wondering, oh my god, what is she doing?
SPEAKER_02Uh what she is doing is called making art, folks. It's gonna change the world. Um, Tina, thank you very much. I've enjoyed this conversation, and and my lord, I enjoy your work. You deserve all the accolades out there. And like I said, the first time I came upon it, I thought, oh, that's pretty. And then I was gonna go on, and I could not. Your work reached out, it grabbed me. Uh, it said, no, there's something deep and cool going on here. And I have really appreciated every moment I've spent, you know, just examining and learning about the images and learning about my reaction to them as I go along. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.
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