What I sense but can’t quite see
2024
Text by Signe Guttormsen (da/eng)
Translation by Jane Rowley
Graphic design by Åse Eg and Signe Guttormsen
40 pages, 34,5 × 23,2 cm, printed by Narayana Press
Published by Space Poetry
The photographs have been taken in the following libraries and archive: Gazi Husrev-begova Biblioteka (Sarajevo), Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv (Cologne), Det Kgl. Bibliotek (Copenhagen) and TÜVEK Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi (Istanbul)
The publication has been generously supported by the New Carlsberg Foundation and and the Grosserer L.F. Foght Foundation
In the Artist Book Signe Guttormsen explores the photographic image using rag paper. For centuries until wood cellulose fibre was invented, paper was made out of rags – textiles that people had worn.
Flipping through the book, you run your fingers over images of rag paper from historical books that the archive staff hold up against the light. In each book an actual piece of rag paper from the artist’s workshop is inserted.
“What the photograph and rag paper have in common is that they are self-referential at the same time as pointing out into the world. In the process of its creation the sheet of paper is elevated to something more valuable than old clothes. Something similar happens in our relationship to the photograph. It is as if what is photographed loses something in the instant it is photographed, yet the image seems more tangible and thereby valuable than what came before it.”
Excerpt from the text
