Nature vs Culture:
A WIP Manifesto

Words and art by Nico Krijno

1. im not interested in hunting for the perfect moment.

2. I use photography to create new worlds within my perceived reality, to ask questions about memory, photography and its (re)presentation

3. I use analogue and digital tools to create my work, and explain the world to myself. I also use the clone stamp and the lasso tool.

4. instead of capturing emotion i would rather like to evoke an emotional response within the viewer that is strangely familiar.

5. (Trompe-l’œil, Making strange, Verfremdung) Alchemy

6. i do not work in linear series, but instead in one continuous and interwoven body of work. like a conversation that never stops,

7. new ideas are constantly added, shifting over time, reprising old ideas and adding new ones.

8. im not just interested in whats in front of the camera, but also what lies behind, underneath and just to the side of the frame.

9. good ideas are more important than sharp and colourful pretty pictures

10. Photographs should hardly ever be propped up with text

11. (This is also a lie)

12. The basic tenets of Gestalt Theory: Proximity, Similarity, Continuity, Closure, and Connectedness

13. Gutt Feelings through my one right eye

14. i use the tools of video, photography, and painting to create my art

15. i can cite direct influences as coming from photographers, Michael Schmidt, Roe Ethridge, the legendary Johns Divola and Gossage,

16. Lucas Blalock and Robert Cumming (also Richard Tuttle)

17. An image taken with a smartphone is just as important as an image taken on a large format view camera or a potato pinhole camera.

18. I knew all of this before, but was unable to express it

19. im interested in sculpture and form, but the main concern is the transformation created by the camera. the thing becoming something else

20. my work can be read as a sampler of photographic genres, portrait, landscape, nude & still life images all sit next to each other to reveal and explore the medium and its limitations.

21. the only aspect of my process that i value is my intellectual curiosity through experimentation. (strategy)

22. The day i would start knowing where the work is going i would stop (goal)

23. an ode to effort

24. My work is inside my body. (mind/body/technology)

25. I use what i find lying ‘around’ and convert and transform this debris through a kind of creative alchemy into a theatrical mise en scene

26. This urban ‘jetsam and flotsam’ comes with its own knowledge, a built in aesthetic which i unearth and explore in my constructions

27. Im Always trying to surprise myself, and come up with unsolvable pictures i havent seen before, to get beneath the surface.

28. the indecisive moment

29. i believe in the power of the single image, but im currently more interested in the role of associative patterns and the contiguities of perception revealed when images are sequenced in a book or on a wall

30. …

@nico.krijno