Palmgren, Dan | Artist Register – Artists’ Association of Finland

Bio

I am an artist who expresses myself both through paintings and photography. These techniques allow me to express myself in complimentary ways.
When I paint, I create a world which hasn't existed before, but which gets its impressions from reality. When I take a photograph, I depict what already exists. Nonetheless the end results are closely related. You could say that it's basically the same process, where the dancing brush is alternated with a lens, or vice versa. If it can be an adventure to complete the virtual world on the canvas, it can also be an adventure to move just a few centimeters to get the composition in the camera viewfinder to be just right.
Every summer I make long trips in nature, where I photograph the greenery and the sea. I am especially fascinated by the optical effects of light breaking in water. Many of my photographs were taken in the Maldives and in Thailand. They were taken with an underwater camera near or under the surface. I would describe them as balancing between the real, and the abstract. The pictures also have another aspect in addition to the aesthetic one: the underwater world is not a natural place for humans, in the beauty also lurks danger. Anyone looking at the surface from above can envisage the monsters of the sea gliding along in the dark depths – real or imagined.
My underwater photographs were taken with 35mm film, the Iceland photos with a medium format camera. I compose in the viewfinder, and often use the whole frame without cropping.