It is hard to tell why, but the age we are living in provokes an increasing number of people over the world to concentrate on living with less and to de-clutter. Be it financial crises or way of thinking, it has become obvious that over-consuming will only lead us to wreckage.
That is why when I stumbled upon Sannah Kvists project
All I Own, I invited her to participate in our
A Portrait of the Artists series. Sannah is a young Swedish
photographer who is on a quest to find and expose the reasons and effects of a replaceable culture and life on mortgage that lead to the present day state of mind of the 80's generation. For her project, Sannah has produced a number of photographs showing University students in Sweden with all their belongings.
What inspired you for the project All I Own? Is it a reaction to over-consumerism?
I had lived for 23 years when I took the photo of me and everything I
owned and thought it was a sad collection of junk I've managed to buy.
But this was also the center of my sell-everything-period when I did not
own much. It's always this multi-layered and I oscillate between two
opinions. Most of the other people I have photographed had a different
feeling though. They were more surprised at how much shit they actually
owned. But I guess so. You can tell when you move how much there really
is. I think most people actually got an eye-opener when they built the
piles.
The project started as a documentation of
what I owned at that time. I had just moved for the third time in six
months and was so damn tired of moving everything so I had started to
give away much of what I owned. At the moment I owned not much at all.
When I wanted to continue the project with other participants, I noticed
how quickly they began to "compose" their stacks. Much time was devoted
to fine-tune them, put some stuff in front, hiding others. They were
proud of some things, less than others. It became clear that it was
important to express the models' own personality in the pictures,
probably much because all were portrayed next to the stack.
So
far it has gone fairly smoothly because all the models are used to
moving around and therefore do not live in big houses with giant
furniture. But I want to try to broaden the participants something. It
has been quite convenient to choose people in your direct or indirect
presence.
The trend for de-cluttering is taking over the world. What do you think is the reason behind that?
It seems to be something I always will come back to, to get rid of
what I have. I get some kind of idea that I would be a more harmonious
and free person without all junk, so I sell what I have and give away
the rest. Then I sit in my apartment with a bed, a desk, a computer and
some clothes. I realize that I am neither a more harmonious and free,
and feel the white walls tip over on me, and start buying little
porcelain figures again.
But I struggle every day with
consumption. I know that I have a desire for things I did not know I
needed. Someone else just decided that I wanted this. But it is hard to
resist even if you do know this. I feel I am shallow and being cheated
when I consume, but also it's hard to argue against it since it actually
makes people happy. And who am I to say to me that this happiness is
more false and wrong than... for example, love?
Can you take us through the creative process? How much time did staging each of the photos take?
The procedure is as follows: I set up the camera in the
participants' living rooms or bedrooms (most live in one room
apartments) and the model must collect all the furniture and all the
loose stuff to build a pile, a sculpture, in front of the camera. They
get all the freedom to design the stack and choose what should be a
priority spot from the camera's perspective. Everything should be in,
however, but one can hide some stuff in the back. I photograph the
person and the pile together.
Depending on how ambitiously they are
involved with their styling, each image took from 2 to 5 hours, with
coffee break included of course.
Why did you want your objects to be born in the same year?
All participants are born in the 80s, just like myself. It is an
important part of the project that it is limited in this way. It has
other limitations too, but this is the most important.
Why?
Because '80s Generation is the first generation, at least in Sweden,
who had to grow up with worse social conditions than their parents,
while the way we consume has changed radically.
'80s
Generation has also grown up with a new approach to individualism and
has been described as extremely selfish and materialistic of previous
generations. I have nothing to say about this, but I think the criticism
has been fierce.
We buy more and more and much of what
we buy is based on confirmation of our own person. I want to explore
how this generation, my own, has been affected by this change in
approach to consumption.
Do you think people nowadays identify themselves with their possessions rather than with their knowledge?
Just when I had started working with this project I became aware that
none of the participants had a fixed mortgage or a first contract, but
shorter sublet. They were already very familiar to moving around town with
their boxes full of lifestyle products. While previous generations
easily were able to find safe housing, having to move every 6 months
became normalized for younger generations.
I remember myself when I
lived in Stockholm, how I before moving to a new flat minimized my
stuff more and more. I came to Stockholm to a truck and went away with
an IKEA-bag. What was left was what I thought was most important. It
defines me most as a person.
Now when I live in
Gothenburg, where it's easier to find a sublet where you can stay
longer, I have increased the household goods again. Most with trinkets, I
think… I just recently bought a life size skeleton made of PVC. I have
no further comments… :-)
So while the property itself
becomes non-static and reduced to some sort of showroom for the stuff we
own, the identification value has increased.
Here is how to get in touch with Sannah: website | facebook | flickr | tumblr
All photographs published with permission from Sannah Kvist.
