The project ‘THE DOPPELGÄNGER SERIES – MOURNING MIRRORS FOR WHAT LOST’ consists of photographs from nature reserves, collaborations with artificial intelligence (AI), holograms and videos. Exploring the loss of biodiversity and unique biotopes, the project tackles our relationship, care and belonging to nature. Old-growth forests are essential biotopes for many plants and animals. Clear-cutting them instigates diminishing biodiversity and increases carbon dioxide emissions.

In parts of the project, Susanne Fagerlund collaborates with AI, where she feeds an algorithm with her own photographs from nature reserves. The algorithm then tries to learn how to mimic similar landscapes, and images of artificial nature are created through machine learning. 

The process is vital to the project where the artist visits nature preserves – photographing, hiking,  and experiencing the immersive feeling of forests. Afterwards, she collects her photographs into an archive of images for AI to train from. Subsequently, AI mimics Fagerlund’s photographs and creates interpreted artificial landscape images. The result of the collaboration is a reminiscence of nature. In fiction and mythology, the presence of a” Doppelgänger” is often seen as a harbinger of future misfortune.

Everything from photographing to letting AI process her photo archive – is an act of mourning what is being lost.

She collaborates with HASSELBLAD CENTER in her upcoming project, where she will work with Göteborgs Naturhistoriska Museum’s photographic archives. Using artificial intelligence to process the photographic archive, she creates a speculative future where images of new plants and species are formed. A digital ecosystem where past and future images coexist in the perpetual tension of the present climate crisis.

It is the few, if any, who will proudly stand by their own vanity. But it is always there,
hidden, held down, ne-tuned, manipulated, for many different reasons – and sometimes for the better in all of us. And it can, I think, be extremely interesting to take a closer look at, to enlarge and highlight, to let loose. 

And whereas we – the young and the middle-aged – have all kinds of opportunities to shape and nurture our vain tendencies on social media channels, there is a generation whose vanities are rarely exposed nor demanded: the elderly. 

Henny is her name. Well, actually, she was born Hendrika Catharina Louise. She also had a ”show name” for whenever she hosted fashion shows in her fashion boutique. That was Juliette, because it sounded French and she liked that. 

My project is a series that explores identity through photography. It’s a portrait of a woman afraid of getting older who begins to redefine herself as a character. 

Henny lives on the 6th floor of a concrete apartment building. She lives alone with Bella, her dog – her husband passed away five years ago. Together, she and her husband had moved in because of the apartment’s ”million-dollar ocean view.” They wanted to feel free, she told me one afternoon while smoking a cigarette in her kitchen. 

Henny’s late husband had worked as a portrait photographer and she as a fashion stylist. From introducing me to this part of her life, Henny and I started working together, trying to capture a piece of her fabulous past. We slowly, but steadily started to create a space that allowed us to explore her as a character by styling her in her own old clothes and embracing her perception of herself. With Henny in the role of the stylist and me as the photographer – a dynamic reminding her of her late husband, Peter – the meetings became playful explorations of their shared past. 

Henny does not only perform as my model but also functions as a collaborator. Together we confront the perceived conformity and vulnerability of the older generation by capturing Henny as the brave character that she is. 

Henny and I have been working on this series for three years now and it is still ongoing. 

Six years ago, a forward-leaning, talkative man with a top hat came over to me in Aarhus. He asked me if I was a photojournalist and if it was a 35mm lens I had around my neck. I said in amazement “yes” and listened. He had been on the needle for 40 years but never took an overdose. “Who is he?” I just managed to think before I had to laugh out loud about his stories. He was extremely eloquent with a special facial expression and an indomitable humor. We had good chemistry. Jørgen immediately invited me home to his apartment for some rock and roll on his speakers.

Sofie, from my team at school, suggested that I kept on following Jørgen. “Yes” but I got  a little anxious about the thought of going really close to Jørgen, because his life had to have a serious backside and I didn’t know what the project would lead to. I had to do it.

We saw each other for a few months, then Jørgen became ill. In 2016 he was hospitalized most of the summer in Skejby on ward Q. He had tried it before, because all the nurses knew him, and they talked very well together.

Jørgen was hospitalized several times. Several of the other addicts in the environment told me that he should have been dead long ago, considering his age and years of abuse. Although the number of comorbidities at one time numbered four at the same time – he rose again. But why? His mother has already lost a son who was also an addict, and Jørgen denied that she should experience it again.

In the fall of 2016, the roles in our relationship changed. I was in a traffic accident. A back injury and concussion at the same time, it was hard hitting. Jørgen called. He was at his mother’s home and had found the doctor’s handbook. Jørgen gave me good advice for my situation and was worried. After a six-month break from each other, we finally saw each other at Jørgen’s mother’s home, on his birthday in December 2017. My mother drove me over there, and I thought “How will I ever come back when my mother has to drive me on reportage?”. The birthday brought us together again and it was an opening to get even closer to Jørgen, who has become an inspiration and friend for life. If Jørgen can rise after so many physical downturns, so can I.

«Take care of yourself son, your mom loves you» is a personal journey in time and a photographic exploration of family relations, adoption, connections between myself as an adopted child, and the search for my biological mother.
South Korean adoption began in 1953 as a consequence of the Korean War. As of today over 200 000 people have been adopted from South Korea, reaching its heights in the late 70s going into the 80s. Unlike the period following the Korean War when most adopted children were abandoned orphans, the majority of children sent for adoption during this period were born into the proletarian life of unmarried women. In 1985 over 8700 babies from South Korea were adopted with an average of 24 babies having left the country every day.
To this day, single mothers and children out of wedlock are still
stigmatized in Korean society. If you become pregnant in South Korea and the man wants nothing to do with you, life can become very difficult. Many choose to give up their own child, because they know that a mother without a husband can get frozen out from family and friends. Having children in South Korea is extremely expensive, It’s a saying that if you have more than one, you are either rich or stupid. As a single mother with a child you are in great danger of being financially ruined.

I came to Norway in 1994 and I have often felt different. This has reinforced the feeling of being adopted, which in terms created an urge to understand my Korean history.
During my life I have from time to time gone through an identity crisis and asked myself who I am. I’ve spent a lot of time throughout my life being angry and blaming my biological mother. The last few years I have turned the disparate feeling of dissociation into an inconceivable search for resolve. I’ve been traveling around South Korea to get an understanding of how life has been from the perspective of my biological mother.
I’ve always dreamt of our first meeting and I don’t know if I’d ever get the opportunity. I believe she’s the only one who can answer for my lost memories of a life to which I am so involuntarily attached.

I am sitting in the passenger seat of a pick-up truck. Between me and the man driving leans the long barrel of a shotgun. Around us, the grass has turned yellow in the dry heat. Scattered in the fields, the bunkers stick their heads out of the ground, their spacious bellies underground. I am alive and you are dead, I think as I drive past the world’s largest survival community.

Journal entry. 4 September 2022. Edgemont, South Dakota.

The Fall presents a series of photographs that look at popular myths surrounding the apocalypse and less credible, associated theories. From La Palma in the Canary Islands, to the United States and the Greek island of Patmos, where the Book of Revelation was written, I investigate how society is preparing to face potentially catastrophic events, environmentally triggered or otherwise.

Chance meetings with strange men looking for their mother’s lost wedding ring in the middle of a desert, survivalists, preppers, religious cults and bunker-dwellers. Each encounter resulted in a series of photographic portraits accompanied by a personal doomsday narrative informed by interviews, field recordings and a hand-written journal. 

Feeding on the popular genre of the photographic road trip propagated by a majority of male photographers, I drive alone into the American West, with fear and awe, down the road of the apocalypse. The Fall builds on my background in journalism and fine art by combining documentary photography and fiction to reflect on society’s collective fears, imagined and real, rational and irrational.