© Arja Hop & Peter Svenson, 'Residue Amsterdam' 2020, Residue; Blackberry, Rubus fruticosus, Messines

Peter, you’re from New Zealand and you live now in the Netherlands with Arja. How did you meet each other?

Peter Svenson (PS): I came to live in the Netherlands in 1980 and out of a desire to have access to a professional darkroom worked in photo-labs since 2005 in my own company, Aap-lab. Arja and I must have crossed paths many times in the 17 years we both lived in Amsterdam. We had been to the same Lou Reed concerts, seen the same movies, and biked across town daily, but we only actually met when Arja called Aap-lab, as a client, in September 2014 as a photographer that works with film and wanted Aap to develop them. It appeared we had a lot in common, and I was fascinated by her negatives. It was kind of love at first print. Within about six months our connection grew into a relationship that developed into an artistic partnership. We bought a notebook, started writing down our ideas, and became Arja Hop and Peter Svenson.

I had the pleasure to see your work on two occasions, but can you explain the main principle of your oeuvre and collaboration?

PS: The principle behind our work has developed out of observation and curiosity. We have made it a rule not to manipulate the results to suit preconceived ideas about aesthetics or beauty, and to remove for as much as that is possible our individuality to make work devoid of ego and subjective self-reflection. Each project we have undertaken has given us insights and information which lead us to new projects in a seemingly organic way, and we begin to understand that this is an exponential process without a specific endpoint. The simplification of extremely complex processes into images we can experience without needing to understand, which at the same time through their impact demand explanation is where we are in our work now. The logical next step would be perhaps to introduce mathematical absolutism in the form of numerical analyses as a new layer of understanding of the colors and what they mean. To integrate the poetry of human perception with the biotechnological realities of nature in a way that levels you to a point of egalitarian contact with the universe could perhaps be the motivation.

The projects are always within a fixed radius of a certain surrounding? How do you determine where to start a project? Is it a personal selection? Or is it more from an interest in an ecologic and scientific way to approach nature and photography?

Arja Hop (AH): Some projects start because of location characteristics, certain plants or ecology, but others more on the basis of human-related similarities, cultural history, human interventions through which comparisons can be made, such as plants within and outside the dykes, agricultural area in the transition to the nature area, but also history, such as the history of the Westhoek and the remains from prehistoric times, burial mounds in the Veluwe. There is always a personal link with the project, but that can vary from a personal event or family-related, to the fact that we live there, or what we have become fascinated within conversations with others, and have come to make a connection with the environment or the technique we discussed. There are also practical considerations. When there is little time or the budget is not great, we look for our subjects close to home, or even in the studio, and sometimes with residual material, which always gives a lot of freedom in experimentation, nothing can go wrong. There are projects that we started once, then stay in the drawer for a long time, and come out much later to continue working on. Very intuitive on the one hand, but other works are again systematically organized and prepared. For the ferns in New Zealand, we had to do a lot of bureaucratic preparation, fill out forms, ask permission. During the 'lockdown' in March, for example, for the first and perhaps the only time we were able to photograph and search for plants in the old city center of Amsterdam, the ramparts, which would otherwise be crowded by visitors and daily stubbornly cleaned streets, overgrown with wild plants, and photographing was allowed, which is normally prohibited. Sometimes it is important to respond immediately to a situation because you know it will not come back, while other projects can continue for as long as we continue to work. The starting point of work can also be an analog photographic or optical question that we want to investigate, after which we look for a suitable environment in which to work this out, or it can be an emotion such as, the insignificant feeling of emptiness that always crept over Peter when visiting his aunts, which later resulted in the research that we did in the Westhoek and which is related to the 1st World War. By optical, for example, I mean a project that we are currently working on that starts with questions about physical and chemical properties of colors in analog photography, we are going to research and elaborate this on the basis of the autumn trees around the corner from the studio. With every project, the focus will be somewhere else.

© Arja Hop & Peter Svenson, 'Whanganui'

© Arja Hop & Peter Svenson, 'Whanganui' (field note)

© Arja Hop & Peter Svenson, 'Whanganui', Residue 15, Kamahi / Weinmannia racemosa

© Florachromes at Huis Marseille Museum of Photography Amsterdam. Photo documentation by Eddo Hartmann

We don't want to get stuck on a method, unless you could say that exploring and exploiting the limits of what is possible within the laws of analog photography is a method. We are always open to new input. We prefer to cross these boundaries in both physical and chemical processes, which is why it sometimes happens that something we have been working on for a long time will never see the light of day, since its result does not work or does not work yet. Our fascination for Natural phenomena runs like an analogy together with the analog photography with which we investigate them. But you will often also see an element of awareness about the plant world (including trees) and in relation to their environment in our work through the findings we make with regard to plants and more specifically plant juices and the plant dyes associated with them. There is also an analogy here, in addition to their beauty and multiformity, the plants also seem mysterious to us, and at the same time, you could draw a comparison in their functioning with a chemical factory. Plants are fully connected to their environment, from their behavior and reactions you can read everything about the environment, if you can understand the plant signals, And although we ourselves do not really understand that language, we are both gripped by that language. We would like to know more about it. And understanding may not be theoretical understanding, perhaps it is resignation, recognition, and wonder, letting it be what it is, showing it. We have started to think more and more about plants and the meaning of plant signals, about how we as humans relate to plants and the importance of plants on the earth. The dyes of the plants, for example, raise questions, what are we looking at, what is the composition of the substance, where does it come from, why are there differences in methodical comparisons of the same plant? Which circumstances and influences play a role. Observing and establishing is what we do, but literally answer, an explanation is difficult and not our goal. We cannot go beyond the photographic evidence. We are thinking about going to a scientific lab to look at the plant juices and work out a project based on demonstrable data, we are open to it, but it is not our ultimate focus. Perhaps it is also more interesting to approach the plants instead of using them indiscriminately, we are careful and always use little plant material, and usually, from plants that are popularly seen as weeds, in any case not rare plants, it would be nice if we could find a form to work with the plants in an equal way. In any case, it is one of the challenges in our work for us. But in general, making our findings tangible and being able to let them experience the context in which we always work.
Then there is something else that motivates us, our collaboration. Because the two of us form one entity, there is the possibility for us to question the egocentricity in our work. The importance of egocentrism and the importance of symbiosis, and the interplay between these two states of mind.

Sometimes the collaboration seems to go without saying and if we dive into the subject with enthusiasm as one being, we complement and assist each other, the tasks are not clearly divided. It is then not the case that one person works out the concept and the other takes care of the technical implementation. At other times the one is more thoughtful than the other, and we part ways to find out for ourselves whether we and what we think of it. Then we first have to convince each other more, perhaps because the idea is still too lucid or just too obvious or (non) personal. It does not happen that we disapprove of each other's ideas, but it may be the case that an idea still lacks an ingredient to make each other understandable, this is often intuitive, it is as if there is not enough urgency to go all the way. The flowchart shows how all projects are interconnected.

Residue, biochromatical colour scale. Our Residue projects consist of a photographic research of plants, exploring their physicality, beauty and the response they provoke in human emotions. We examine the relationship between people and plants in specific geographical areas, the appreciation of the nature in the direct environment and how this relationship is in other parts of the world. It's about examining the coloration of natural dyes of flora inherent to various plants at ruderal areas in the form of a biochromatical colour scale. 

The color fields are always combined with another kind of analog photography. How do you decide on a particular approach for the second part of the projects? Does it present itself as a descriptive supplement to the work environment? Or am I making an all too easy decision here?

AH: The parallel project is not a conceived concept but an intuitive fact and arises simultaneously with the determination of the environment, the collection of the plants. During this form of zooming in on an environment, we get to know the environment, it works as an orientation, and we capture essential aspects from the environment, usually in a naturalistic form. They are registrations. It is often documentation of the environment or of a plant in its recognizable form. The intention is to indicate the context. Although the color residues are also essentially realistic, you look at the plant extract in its material form, they appear abstract at first. It is not so much that we think that in addition to the colors, explanations are needed in the form of contextual photos, but it is more in a way a report of the research. It works for us as a witness from the record world to the human world (an intermediate step).

© Arja Hop & Peter Svenson, Westhoek Belgium,'Messines'

© Arja Hop & Peter Svenson, Westhoek Belgium, The resulting work is 66 plant extracts printed on photographic paper, hung in a visual grid measuring 245cm x 370cm.

Can you tell me about the projects starting from a personal feeling?

AH: Actually, you can speak more of a personal intuition than of a personal feeling, the interest and motivation to dive into a project can have an emotional side, but it is also always a cerebral consideration. It is very much intertwined with both of us and mainly has to do with a suspicion that something is to be investigated, that something is hidden under the surface. But we don't know that in advance. We also do not always come outright. With some projects, it seems to be more natural than with others. Some are more straightforward than others. Sometimes we start with a certain focus, but we end up somewhere else, for example, something else becomes transition than the meta-focus, while ecology was the starting point in the first instance. There are so many memories, stories, knowledge, history, and sense of involvement in the earth or hidden in a specific environment that we pass by in daily life. This actually always gives us the motivation that wherever we start with, there will always be a core of the story. And then ultimately that core is also mixed with our choice: you are watching with us. It could just be that someone else, perhaps someone who knows the place in question well, has a completely different involvement with it. Sometimes it is also always a dialogue between factual findings and associations, associations that arise from strong suspicions and combined with things we do know, we are not scientists, but observe everything, yet we cannot interpret everything exactly and it remains an open end. An experience!

© Arja Hop and Peter Svenson, 光合成, Common walnut / Juglans regia

© Arja Hop and Peter Svenson, 光合成, Florachromes from Residues of trees of the Van Gogh AiR before the equinox, Juglans regia

© Arja Hop and Peter Svenson, 光合成, Florachromes from Residues of trees of the Van Gogh AiR after the equinox, Juglans regia

© Arja Hop and Peter Svenson, 光合成, installation view at Vincent van Gogh Huis Zundert, 2020

Residue Amsterdam, i can’t help but thinking this is the most personal project as a couple. Both locations are intertwined in one epic work and relate to your personal heritage. How did this concept come about?

AH: Residue Amsterdam. I don't know if it is the most personal I wouldn't dare say. It is of course certainly the project that is continuously topical for us. It surrounds us day and night. As soon as we leave the house, we are confronted with the project and the plants and trees. Maybe that's why it is the most direct project. The project we cannot escape from and which completely controls our lives. Sometimes annoyingly because you sometimes want to be able to clear your head. It has, as it were, got under our skin and will probably never stop if we stay in Amsterdam. It's like having a child or a pet (we had a cat that turned 21, we found out along the way that we were actually visiting her instead of the other way around, we were her pet. But that aside). In 1992 I painted "oil on canvas". Always looking for materiality and always wanted to look through it, or under it or behind it, impossible, I painted with the grit of stone/minerals, with pigment and oil, (homemade recipe) made shapes of stones and solidified lava lumps, irregular, insignificant shapes. In large format, maybe I got closer to it? I was done with it around 2013 and decided to stop doing "oil on canvas". Workshop empty, start over. It was January, and I walked out of the studio (was then in a'dam - zuid, near the Amsterdamse Bos) through streets, I had a strong intuition that what I needed had to be on the street. Almost innocently but also a bit forced by myself (was it always in the fields in the village because of the nostalgia for the past, or was it nostalgia for nature or my own nature) some branches of poplars, (I already knew a lot of plants) and walked back to the studio with my pockets full. There I spread everything on the floor and sorted it by type. And almost immediately I realized that this was simultaneously the raw material and the subject of my future work. Not only did it have potential as artistic research, but it brought me to deeper existential questions, and brought me a step closer to the skin of nature, and in particular the plant world. Later, when the work guide would also be crystallized together with Peter, and our work would become a methodical approach, this would become more clear. Namely, it seems that in our current approach we have stumbled on a language, or signals from the record world, we do not know exactly the meaning but it makes us think about the things that have always been there but are now seeing the light of day. It appears to be a democratization of the relationship between plants and humans, an important extra layer in the work.

© Arja Hop and Peter Svenson, Amsterdam 2020, nr.27 Guernsey fleabane, Conyza sumatrensis

© Arja Hop & Peter Svenson, 'Residue Amsterdam' 2020, nr.27 Guernsey fleabane, Conyza sumatrensis, Bloedstraat

© Florachromes at Huis Marseille Museum of Photography Amsterdam (2019-2020), 'Residue Amsterdam'. Photo documentation by Eddo Hartmann

The first approach was to manufacture the plant extracts and then apply them layer by layer on absorbent paper (kind of watercolor but not too much glue, almost only cellulose). More on this result at the web page here. I did that for a year with everything about plants that I encountered at my feet. This resulted in an assignment from the Amsterdam City Archives, I also always made the Mamiya c330 professional s, 6x6 recordings of the plants on site, because it felt as if I had to have witnesses from the plant world, and had involved them in the assignment. That's why I came to Aaplab, Peter's photo lab. As a customer to print one of the 6x6 images and have the many rolls developed. Peter found the plant photos peculiar but also interesting and continued early. That's how it started…! I told Peter that I ran into a technical problem, namely transience. It is a nice statement work to make that disappears with light, but I would rather develop the project further in such a way that it could really be visible and retain a strong visual impact. From day one, we went into the darkroom together to experiment and then arrive at the current working method and photographic approach with regard to color residues, it clicked on all fronts. And that's why work belongs to us together, which one could not have done without the others. I could never have continued to develop and Peter suddenly had a focus for his years of experimenting.

© Arja Hop & Peter Svenson, 'Residue Amsterdam' 2020, Photogram,Canadian horseweed / Conyza canadensis, Ottho Heldringstraat Amsterdam

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LINKS
Arja Hop & Peter Svenson (website) 
Arja Hop & Peter Svenson. Exhibition 'Florachromes: a story of four rivers' at Huis Marseille
Urbanautica Belgium