Simon Hoegsberg latest project “We’re All Gonna Die – 100 meters of existence” captured 178 people in a 100 meters wide photograph. Photographed on a railroad bridge in Berlin he took photographs on more than 20 days in a period of 17 month and finally stitched the images together into a single frame.
Peter F. (PF): As like some of your other projects “100 meters” has a strong relation to street photography. What do you think about modern street photography?
Simon Hoegsberg (SH): My impression of modern street photography is that much of it looks the same. That’s not to say that the subject matter of street photography is uninteresting. The subject matter of street photography is human conditions, and that will never cease to interest people. But if as a photographer you’ve got a message that you’d like to get across you’ll have to make sure to speak in a way so that people pay attention. I have no fixed recipe for how this can be achieved. But I certainly know that you’ll have to avoid making work that people have good reason to dismiss as a cliché.
PF: Do you have an idea what street photography should be like nowadays?
SH: I can’t tell you what street photography should be like nowadays but I can tell you, roughly speaking, what I myself demand of any project – street or not – before I throw myself into it. And that is that the project in terms of form and content must be so tight that I can explain what the project is about in a couple of sentences. Because photography is a non-verbal language it’s easy as a photographer to let yourself be seduced into making romantic, and basically meaningless imagery. I try to avoid that happening to me.
PF: How do you came across the idea for this special project?
SH: In the summer 2007 I spent quite some time in Berlin. I’d gone to Berlin on a mission to write a novel. That project soon failed. I like long lenses, so one day I bought one – a 400 mm. Restlessness and a need to see the city while I was there pushed me forward, and I had no goal.
One day I found myself standing on top of a bridge extended above a great number of railway tracks. I was standing on a concrete pathway that led from the bridge to stairs leading down to platforms where trains were coming and leaving. A continuous flow of people were coming towards and passing me. I put the 400 mm on the camera, and started taking pictures of them. I didn’t know that this was the beginning of a project it would take me the next 17 months to complete.
PF: Have you been inspired by other artist like Philip-Lorca DiCorcia or Beat Streuli?
SH: I didn’t think about Beat Streuli. I didn’t think about diCorcia. If throughout the process of making the 100 meter long picture I was inspired by anyone that someone would probably be my friend, Peter Funch. Trying to pinpoint your sources of inspiration, however, is a son of a bitch.
PF: Do you have difficulties to photograph strangers? For example there is someone on the image who flips the bird to the camera. What kind of reactions you had to experience?
SH: One thing is certain – when I take pictures – especially of strangers on the street – I often feel slightly guilty. I’m taking their picture. Taking. And what am I giving in return? I know that the finished projects I offer people to see on my website is what I give in return. That’s what I remind myself of when a guy coming towards me gives me the finger. It doesn’t put me down. Especially not when I feel that the project I’m working on has great potential. Then most signs of disagreement on the part of the people coming towards me are easy to shrug off.
PF: I guess the post-production for this project was relative costly in terms of time. How much time did you spent for stitching the images together?
SH: The post-production was, as you say, costly in terms of time. In the course of the 20 days I was shooting the material for the picture on the bridge I took around 3000 portraits. I couldn’t and wouldn’t include all 3000 in the long image so I had to figure out which portraits were best suited to “tell the story” I wanted to tell. Deciding which portraits were best fit for the project and deciding where in the picture the portraits should be placed took around 15 months. Removing the background behind each of the 178 portraits that were included in the final image took about two months.
PF: Have there been rules as to what kind of digital interventions were allowed in the process of making the image?
SH: If there were any rules, one of them would be this: include in the final image only objects, buildings and portraits that were shot on the bridge and nowhere else. In one instance I did, actually, circumvent this rule. The airplane in the background towards the end of the picture was taken in Kastrup Airport, Copenhagen, in 2008.
PF: The title of the photograph “We’re All Gonna Die” is relatively martial. Why this title?
SH: I decided for this title one cold evening when I was 10 meters from the front door of the apartment block I live in. The sentence came to me: We’re all gonna fucking die. I knew instantly that this would be the title for the photo.
In the western world most of us, I believe, strive on a daily basis to achieve one goal: to be loved by the world. And on days where we feel that nobody acknowledges us for the efforts we make, we tend to think: What’s the fucking purpose of the whole thing? Now, if we challenge ourselves and start thinking of ourselves not as victims on whom life is hard because it doesn’t give us what we believe we deserve but instead make it our primary goal to try to be an active benefit for the world, then we’ll naturally realize how beautiful life is.
As long as we feel we’re victims and deserve better we are not offering ourselves to the world, and so we will remain closed and, I believe, not got anything in return. Being reminded in the most unambiguous way that I-AM-GOING-TO-DIE may be what I need in order to realize that perhaps it’s time to screw the ego-game and start thinking: How can I make use of my resources so that the world can actually benefit from my presence on the planet?
PF: The format of the image (100m x 0,78m) is really huge. Is there a special reason for selecting this really big format?
SH: For some time I’ve had the feeling that photography has a potential of becoming far more than what it is today. It is as if everyone is complacently content with what seems to be a predefined idea of what a photograph is and how one presents a photograph. Square, picture, wall, that’s it. Coming up with a photograph that is perhaps the world’s longest was what happened when I let the content that I wanted to put in one picture define the physical shape of the photograph. It’s not a particularly imaginative approach – but hopefully it’s a scratch in the surface of the mass of future possibilities I believe is inherent in the medium.
PF: Simon, thank you very much for this interview.
