The Lightworks

The photo series of the Lightworks collection show historical places in their present and the traces of their history, their culture and their significance for us today.
These places were once built for us humans. They had a function, a meaning, a purpose. The places remained.

The abandoned ghost towns of the American West, the sanctuaries of Göbekli Tepe, the ruins of British abbeys, the remnants of ancient Greece.
Photographed with a particular light. It is applied like a brush. It brings out what lies in wait in the darkness – the structure of the stone, the depth of a trench, the silence of an abandoned room. Time accumulated, congealed, standing still. Layer upon layer.

We live in an age that considers itself unprecedented. Then you stand before these places and realise: did not those people also believe that what they were doing would last? That it mattered? And then they left. And something remained.
But not always what they thought it would be.

The images do not seek to turn these places into objects of history. Places that are still here. That breathe. That exist in their own present, completely indifferent to what we wish to read into them.

And for a moment the past is not past. It is simply there. Beside us. Without distance.