However, Despite the Haze You Can Still Get a Concrete Feeling for the Surroundings

MEN I ALLT DET DIFFUSA, FÅR VI ÄNDÅ ETT SÄKERT GREPP OM OMGIVNINGENS KARAKTÄR / HOWEVER, DESPITE THE HAZE YOU CAN STILL GET A CONCRETE FEELING FOR THE SURROUNDINGS is a book that is composed of one photograph. In the book, Erik Betshammar and designer Jonas Williamsson present and represent this photograph, in multiple ways. From the double nature of the insert to the cover and the ambiguous title, all is interlinked.

Erik Betshammar (b. 1985) is a Swedish artist and photographer, based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Betshammar works in the borderland between digital and analogue photographic technology. His work often consists of photographs, installations and texts, and his sometimes long titles provide an existential entry to his world of thought. He graduated in 2012 with an MFA in photography from the Högskolan för Fotografi (School of Photography) at the University of Gothenburg and has received multiple art grants. He has exhibited his work mainly in Scandinavia.

The photograph in the book is reproduced in two versions: one closer to its analogue origin and one where the image has remained longer in the digital materiality – an additional digital space, created by the artist. The silver grains in the film base of the photograph can easily be experienced on the outside of the pages, as the traces of the digital ones and zeroes in the hyper-digital version are almost inaccessible on the inside of the folded pages. To form a third layer, these two images are impossible to see in their complete state, the pages show only cuts. What is visible is a 100% reproduction, cropped by the size of the book page.

By showing two different representations of the same photograph in this way, the artist wants to match his working process and the experiences from engaging with the book as medium. It is in the tension between either or and both that the book is formed, a space where Betshammar likes to work.

HOWEVER, DESPITE THE HAZE YOU CAN STILL GET A CONCRETE FEELING FOR THE SURROUNDINGS is a book that wants to encourage resistance and raise questions about the idea of the photobook itself – what and who creates it, and how readers respond. The book includes a short text by Kirsti Taylor Bye, and an even shorter one by Erik Betshammar.

Kirsti Taylor Bye is a Norwegian artist and photographer.

Jonas Williamsson is a Swedish graphic designer based in Stockholm.

Printed at Narayana Press.