SCENES FROM AN ISLAND

artist, photographer & director FLORENCE MONTMARE
music & sound designer HUGO THERKELSON
choreographer HELENA HÖGBERG
actors & models JULIA HODELL WESTMAN, KRISTOFFER NYSTRÖM KRONANDER

act ONE

HAMMARS, FÅRÖ, SWEDEN 2015

Midway in life, I find myself standing on the barren shores, a wild and rocky pile of land, facing the Baltic Sea. Barren, wind-swept tangled vegetation that grows close to the roots. Still looking for mine. I was looking for home and at the very core of it, solitude. The kind that is earned. It was a strange uncompromising attraction. I returned over and over again. The Island forces me to revisit memories, dreams, fears, shortcomings. In the silence, time expands. There is a slight chill in the air and the ocean is waiting, a giant mirror.

hopeless dream of being

unlikely dream of becoming

Actors have been cast. Julia and her lover, the poet. Then there is another character, ever-present, watching… That character is the Island.

I am invited to Ingmar Bergman’s residence, hidden away on the shore. A remote and isolated location. At first, it is only the landscape that I photograph. With time I populate the images, staging scenarios in various locations.
Bodies in motion contrasted with the desolate topography and its dramaturgy, mountains that have eroded, the earth, the water and the air. A contemplation on transience; body, movement and the surrounding elements. A utopian dream to coexist in harmony with nature, a relationship that is both contradictory and exclusive.
Making this work comes from a desire to pause and contemplate, away from distraction and convenience.

ear deafening silence

there is something more nothing else

nothing, so it be and now comes the rain

***

act TWO

The figures pass through, appear to soon after disappear. Following the same footsteps, circling each other like some kind of strange ritual. Then that magical light, the kind that sweeps over the tree tops, penetrating the depth of the forest.