A snowy stairway to heaven lit by the full moon.
MOONMADNESS I-III
Sweden 1981
Night skiing in northern Skåne turned into a photographic experience as I’d gone back to the cabin for a 6×6 camera, then returned to the wood pile to immerse myself in the snowscape and in the moment.
The moonlit snow scene by the forest was pure magic. No mountain peaks needed for feelings of oneness and heavenly bliss to rise with the moon here.
Three of the resulting exposures ended up as a triptych produced the following week in a Lund darkroom.
The Moonmadness prints pleased me like nothing I’d ever done in photography. I submitted the series to a juried show at Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (where they were accepted)
A triptych is not necessarily a sequence. Not a series of events recorded photographically, nor a sequence in the mystical sense of Minor White, with whom I often felt a connection.
Creating this piece left its mark on the following decade with periods of very active photographic output – and with several triptychs. I guess the blurred vision somehow prepared myself for years of pinhole work at the end of the decade and in the early 1990s as well.
I’ve often been looking for triads and triptychs following this experience – three being the minimum number sufficient to form a sequence and perhaps create a rhythm. Beyond a pair anyway.