In the summer of 2019 I went to Fårö for 12 days. Fårö is an island off the coast of Sweden where the film director Ingmar Bergman decided to settle and also filmed some of his films, Persona being the most famous one. He is dead now and his home has been turned into an artist residency and that is why I had the opportunity to go there. I was offered a house on the beach called the writers cottage. I unpacked my bags and my food. And then I opened the window to the sea and slept. I think I slept for a few days. I had just come from an exhibition opening in Oslo, and the ocean air knocked me out. Nobody was paying any attention to me or making sure that I was working. Bergman’s ghost maybe. Yes. I did hear stories of his ghost still being there. But I was able to sleep through any visits from ghosts. And then I started to explore his house and library. I looked for photography books in his library convinced there must be some with his films always being so stunning, but there were hardly any. Instead I found and studied the Kamasutra. One of the previous residents had sadly stolen books from the library so my access to it was limited. But I could spend a large amount of unsupervised time in his house. If I would have wanted to take a nap on his bed nobody would have probably found me or objected. I sat for a long time in what was called the meditation room which he had built after his wife Ingrid had died to have a place to communicate with her. Her painting was on the wall. I wish I had photos from all the corners of the house. His bedside table that he had scribbled his thoughts directly on in the middle of the night. AFRAID AFRAID AFRAID are the only words I still remember. He used to wake in the night and be haunted by what he called demons. I was not allowed to photograph the house and I followed these rules with a heavy heart. Instead I headed outside and photographed the sea, the rocks, the sky. The writers cottage was also ok to photograph. I photograph myself in it’s window, in it’s bed. I took long walks on the rocky beach frightened by the angry birds, and I found a forest that must have been inhabited by trolls at one point. I made new friends that had come with their own projects to the Island. One of my new friends showed me a witches cottage in a field where someone clearly had lived but didn’t anymore. He took some photos of me outside of it that I never saw. In the evening we gathered in Bergman’s cinema and watch Persona. Nobody was allowed to sit in his chair because that’s where he was still sitting. He was everywhere. And then I had to leave the island, my days were up, much too soon.
Here are some of the images I brought back with me from the island: