‘Danish photographer Asger Carlsen began his career at 16 when he sold a photo he took of the police yelling at him and his friends for burning a picket fence to the local paper. For the next ten years Asger worked as a crime photographer before moving on to shooting ads for magazines. Then one day while messing around on his computer he created an image of a face with a bunch of eyes that led him to the distorted photographs he has become known for. His eerie and often humorous work makes you question what is human, and has been exhibited and published internationally.
‘The images of Carlsen occupy the hazy cloud-cuckoo land between analog and digital photography. His pictures maintain an interesting haphazardness, a truth-before-the lens aesthetic, which is combined with eerie digital manipulations. The apparent on-camera flash and black and white tones further heighten the disconnect between the “real” and the fabricated. Carlsen often employs the visual cues of snapshot photography to suggest a physical, temporal connection between the photographer and the subject. His images depict a version of reality that is both firsthand and dissembling.
‘Persons with prosthetic legs fresh from the wood-shop, or those who may be blessed with backward-bending knees are shown as ordinary as anyone else. One image, similar to William Eggleston’s photograph of a man touching delicately an orange United States Air Force craft, depicts a man kissing, groping a towering mound of otherworldly ectoplasm. Carlsen’s microcosm equalizes all disparate activity; lycanthropes and Janus-faced characters coolly inhabit scenes lit by the glare of the camera’s clinical flash. All of which suggests both the degree to which the camera normalizes and objectifies experience, as well as the reticence of viewers to accept as factual all forms of photographic vision. Carlsen grafts a truthful and authoritative aesthetic upon deliberately fanciful constructions.’ — collaged
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Extras
Asger Carlsen exhibition
Asger Carlsen’s Mind Bending Photographs
Asger Carlsen graces the armchair for episode 13
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Further
Asger Carlson Website
AC portfolio & interview @ Whiteloup
AC interviewed @ Vice
AC portfolio & interview @ Empty Kingdom
AC @ we are CASEY Agency
AC’s book ‘Hester’
AC’s book ‘Wrong’ @ Carlson Projects
AC @ Twitter
AC portfolio @ tinyvices
AC portfolio & interview @ Dazed Digital
‘WE BET YOU’VE NEVER SEEN NUDES LIKE THIS!’
‘Artists Asger Carlsen and Alex Prager Kibitz About their Corporeal Selves’
‘Asger Carlsen: Skræmmende og manipulerende’
Downloadable mixtape by Asger Carlsen @ Sound Advice
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Interview
from APhotoEditor
I read in an interview that you were a crime scene photographer?
AC: People sometimes get that confused. I was a crime scene photographer, but that was when I was out of high school. So I was 17, and then did that for ten years.
Who did you work for? A police department?
AC: Newspapers. I was a full-on newspaper photographer. I started out as an intern, and saw how it was done. Then I bought a police scanner, and would respond to the calls. Car accidents and stuff. Eventually, I did photograph a bit for the police.
You’ll have to forgive me a bit here. My wife is a therapist, and my mother-in-law is a therapist, and now, being an interviewer, I’ve kind of morphed into this guy who tries to read the tea leaves. It sounds to me like there was a lot of darkness going on in your job, and in your head, and all of a sudden, it popped up out of the shadows, into this style that became yours.
AC: Certainly, there is an understanding of how those crime scene scenarios could look like. The work certainly represents my time as a newspaper photographer.
You can dig into that. You can see how I was standing in front of a car accident, photographing it. It’s just different objects.
I have some students, and we were looking at some work last week that was really super-digi. Over-saturated, hyper-real, hopped up, textured and degraded. I talked about that, and these are younger students, and they couldn’t see it. That archive that we have in our head, of the cinematic and celluloid look, they don’t have that baseline. Their baseline is digital reality.
They can’t tell the difference between the super-saturated color look on the screen, and what you see when you walk out your door. Their brains are just different now.
AC: They are different. Do you think they understand my work differently than you understand it?
Sure. I would think they have to. I showed “Wrong” to students last year, and they ate it up. Ate it up. I’m curious to see what happens when this generation of students, who has only grown up in the digi-verse, when they’re mature enough as artists to make shit that we can’t even imagine.
AC: I’m sure in ten or twenty years, the files being produced by these random Canon cameras, that’s going to be a style that people will try to copy again.
The sci-fi reference in your work are so strong, and I don’t even consider myself a sci-fi geek. What did you read or see that ended up percolating into your work.
AC: I was inspired by painters, different art movements and all these obvious classical references. There’s a certain awkwardness in the work, and maybe that’s my attempt to try to fit into a photography style. Part of the reason why I became a photographer is that there was a certain loneliness in it, a searching for something. I think the work is a bit about that as well.
Trying to find my spot. Maybe I am a dark person? (Thinks about it.) I am a dark person.
You certainly have it in there.
AC: I felt like an outsider when I grew up, for sure. There are certain things I’m good at, and photography is one of them. But I was not a success in school, not a success in many things, but there was this one thing I could do.
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Show
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p.s. Hey. Blog reader and visual artist Carolyn Fliest asked if she could commandeer my galerie to guest-host a show featuring the uncannily manipulated photos of Danish artist Asger Carlson, and I said, ‘Sure’, as you can see, and agreed happily and gratefully, as you can no doubt imagine. Spend your local time perusing the show, please, and give thanks of some sort in whatever form you like to your guest-host, if you don’t mind. Thank you, and thank you the most, Carolyn. ** JM, Hi, man. Oh, good. I mean good it snagged you. Well, well worth the purchase and read. Still haven’t seen ‘Us’. Still in he mysterious middle. You good? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. That’s curious: Yesterday I restored the blog’s old Dirk Bogarde post for future visibility having no idea it was his birthday. Love him and wish he had been still present to eat some cake. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Yeah, his strong association with punk is what alerted his stuff to me. Well, I’m sorry to hear that he lost his critical acuity in his later years. Ha ha. ** Steve Erickson, Reviews! Okay, curious to read your take on the dreadful (IMHO) recent Denis, and of course on the other film I don’t know. Everyone, Why don’t you go read what Mr. Erickson thinks of Clare Denis’s newest film ‘High Life’ and then go read what he thinks of Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s first film ‘The Mustang’. Sounds like a plan to me. Ah, good old auto-fill. Every time I write the word “is” here, auto-fill instantly changes it to “iOS”. For instance. When I saw Bob Gluck several months ago, he said he was actually somewhat close to finishing a novel he has been working on for more than a decade, so I hope so. He is one gradual, meticulous writer, that Mr. Gluck. Interesting and imaginable and conceptually mixed blessing-filled, that gig. ** Keatonhoma, How about Keatondashian? Age is a non-flatterer, the fucker. Nitrogen coffee, huh. That might be enough to get me in a Paris Starbucks. Might. Editing is the real thing as far as yours truly is considered, yes indeed. Lay those threads. Dude, nice guitars and, obviously, guitarist. Everyone, Keaton gives you the golden opportunity to go look at some sweet, Keaton-ly curated guitars, and I suggest you grab that. Enter. ** Right. Look at Danish art today, please, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Asger Carlsen is wonderfully weird.
Agnes Varda R.I.P. She was 90 years old. One obit revealed that the birth father of her daughter Rosalie was Antoine Bourseiller, the stage and film director and actor. He played the soldier in “Cleo de 5 a 7” Jacques Demy was Mathieu’s father. Agnes was a great artist and a wonderful person.
@ Carolyn, thank you for this intro to the world of Asger Carlson, someone who’d been new to me until today. I find his work emotional and disquieting, so therefore very compelling all round. It puts me in mind of Hans Bellmer which is high praise indeed.
Hi!!
I came up with this idea for SCAB: I used to have a tumblr where I collected pictures of basically everything and anything I found inspiring but as a huge percentage of these were erotic/pornographic material, tumblr’s new no-sex rule basically killed the whole blog. So I decided to start moving those pictures (giving credit to the original source/artist whenever it’s possible, of course) over to SCAB’s twitter page, one at a time, daily. I feel pretty thrilled about reviving and re-sharing my collection this way and I also think it’s a great way to pin down exactly what kind of stuff I’m looking for for the magazine. We’ll see how it goes!
I’m not sure how it works but after PGL’s success, maybe it’ll be a tad bit easier to get the grants you need for your new film? I mean success at all the screenings so far, though I guess this is exactly where it matters a lot whether it gets the +16 rating – obviously, it’s a big obstacle when it comes to reaching a wider and more general audience.
This week (besides work), I started watching a new Netflix documentary about the disappearance of 3-year-old Madeleine McCann (I’ll share my opinion but only after I finished watching the whole thing – so far, I’m not convinced), I checked out the new apartment of a friend (which was really cool), wrote some stuff (stuff that doesn’t hold any literary value whatsoever but as a self-analytical mess it’s not so bad) and accepted the first entry for SCAB’s fifth issue. Not a very spectacular week but some tiny things still.
How was yours? How’s the TV script coming along?
Have a great, great weekend, Dennis!!
@ Carolyn – thank you for this treat! Amazing post!!
One more review this week, on New Directors/New Films entry MS SLAVIC 7: https://read.kinoscope.org/2019/03/29/talk-wordy-to-me-sofia-bohdanowicz-and-deragh-campbells-ms-slavic-7/
Do you know the recent French documentary JUST DON’T THINK I’LL SCREAM, which kicks off Art of the Real at Lincoln Center next month? The director went through a period of watching 4 or 5 movies a day while living in an isolated house in the country after breaking up with his boyfriend, and the film’s images are made up of footage from them.
RogerEbert.com will be publishing my interview with Kamran Heidari next week to coincide with the series at Spectacle. if all goes well, I will receive the translation of his answers tomorrow and the interview will go up on their website Monday. I’m also hoping to get postcards for the series very soon.
Love the Asger Carlsen photos today! They remind me a little of Bellmer’s famous portrait of Unica Zurn, tied up. (And Carlsen is kind of a babe too, hmm.)
Jack the Modernist was a life-changing experience for me, back in the day. Oddly enough, I’ve never been in the same room as Robert Gluck, as far as I know.
Hope your weekend is shaping up nicely. I really need to stop being distracted, and start working on some stuff for next week’s gig.
Bill
Carolyn – These Asger Carlson photos are startling and unsettling, in the best ways. Glad to be introduced to his work. Thanks for putting this post together with all the other info, as well.
Dennis – What a shitty week, losing Scott Walker and Agnes Varda. Damn.
Enjoyed the Jack the Modernist post. Recently enjoyed Gluck’s book of essays and been meaning to get to the fiction. That the place to start?
Continuing to madly scramble to get ready for Paris, just about finished with freelance work so I can forget about it while I’m there. Hoping to see the new Harmony Korine before I leave. That open there yet? Eager to pick yr brain about interesting exhibits, shows, etc happening. Sent you an email about PG screening. Looking forward to seeing you soon!
Dennis, I don’t like seeing the human body in these iterations. Which is why I like this artist/photographer.
Oh, yes, I read my peeps’ stuff. Kind of goes without saying for me. Buy ’em, read ’em, burn ’em. Okay, no burnin’ ’em. 😉
In boring news, I’ll be redoing my closet this weekend. Then it’s on to the bookcases. I’m such boring boy.
Have a good weekend.
Hey Dennis, these are very cool and even great. I was looking in the “foreign film” section for more Malle, but instead found Bresson’s L’Argent, which I saw again tonight. I’m becoming more and more of a Bresson fan, thanks to you. This was impeccably amazing, even better the second time – and this time it made me very sad, a good sad. I’ve reserved The Devil, Probably…will see that next.
I told a friend the very nice comment you said to me about my book the other day and he said you got that comment from Star Trek. I thought that was ridiculous – do you even watch Star Trek? Anyway, thanks – made me feel so good the other morning, Star Trek or not, haha.
Hi Dennis Cooper,
I’m not sure if you remember me, but I posted roughly a year ago to inform you about my discovery of Pierre Buisson and his other identity “Pierre Martinelli.” I recently discovered a few more heterosexual films of his, including a rare one from 1983. I was curious if you’d found out any interesting information on him? I’d like to think that he’s alive.