igorpjorrt:

Igor Pjörrt for Hunger Magazine Issue 11

I spend 2 hours every day looking at photos/images–that’s approximately 750 hours this year.

Given that someone might think of asking (trust me though, no one will): what one up and coming photographer or image maker completely leveled you this year?

I’d need to expand the parameters to two–but with two I can do it: Igor Pjörrt and Sannah Kvist.

I’m going to circle back to Kvist in a later post but for now let’s consider Pjörrt.

I’ve compared his use of light to Lina Scheynius–and to be 100% clear Scheynius is done no favors by this comparison.

His work takes risks: scenes go far, far too dark but somehow maintain the trappings of narrative context, light seethes and bleeds. He has an innate sense of how to convey a simultaneously concrete and miasmatic sense of space–creating an uneasy oneiric balance between dream space and the hollow conventions of pop culture. (I mean his images are clearly informed by the orange approaching and blue receding that’s become the rage, but he uses it more like a master oil painter than a digital cinematographer.

His work tends to feature erotic edges and a pervasive sense of balancing a sense of purpose against sometimes overwhelming melancholy.

Yet what excites me most about his images is his sense of color. It’s brash and loud and in your face but this undercuts that fact that it’s deployed with contemplative restraint.

It’s rare to see someone so young producing work that is so sure of itself, sophisticated and just so completely effing elegant.