One of the responses to the western cultural crisis that generates a climate of uncertainty, depression, inadequacy with respect to events is that of existentialism, of being, of Dasein in Heideggerian words. To it corresponds a need to be in the world in a human way, or with the awareness of being there, and being able to act. This awareness, therefore, translates into an opportunity to feel but also to know, evaluate, decide, opposing that objective perception of powerlessness, of resignation. In the long run, this dogmatism can translate into a state of apathetic indifference, materialistic victimization, unbearable anguish, distrust of others.

From this point of view, photography offers an opportunity for "presence". What does it mean? The photographer can break the spell, decolonizing the gaze, and reactivate a dialectical relationship with the world. Photography as a means, a working tool, presupposes a design possibility aimed at the self when it serves to restore a form of learning or, better, an ontological position. Photography allows us to revive the ancient Socratic motto of "know yourself". While opening up to infinite perspectives of action on the objective world it can reactivate intentionality, finality, and responsibility.

Whatever the direction the photographer intends to take, the aim is to develop a poietic ability, constructive rather than adaptive when it comes to meanings. The truth, therefore, does not lie in the object but in the relationship with it. Through acting, the photographer not only produces but reveals to others his action, allowing others to participate in these actions. In this way, the scope of representation and individual involvement is widened. The myth of instrumental reason that reduces everything to a calculation of convenience is undermined by the exploitation of new knowledge practices.

Photography, therefore, presents itself as an opportunity to investigate and unhide previous discoveries. Thus narrating as an active form of remembering. This is what Maja Daniels did when she chose to reach the "dark and insular spirit" of the community living the Swedish valley of Älvdalen. A remote region where the near-extinct ancient language of Elfdalian is spoken. In her journey lasted from 2011 to 2017 she dialogues with an archive amassed by a man named Tenn Lars Persson (1878 –1938), a local inventor, mechanic, and photographer. 

The result is a story that plays with fictions and breaks away from a too objective vision, and a linear dimension of time. In a seesaw sequence of references to everyday life, with an ethnographic flavor, Daniels makes us participants of her personal feelings, sharing with us the isolation of this territory, "spanning the mystical and vernacular with a kindred symbolic language".

«It's not was easy to get close to them, particularly if you don't speak their language» so writes E.A. Karlfeldt in The Swedish Tourism Association Yearbook of 1926». These words are well rooted in all those populations that entertained a direct and vivid relationship with the world they lived in. It is only by preserving their own language that the peoples defended a privileged relationship with their world and the symbolic and cultural elements that followed. Language as the first form of "social glue", of community solidarity that prevents the estrangement of the individual. In the language, and in the representation of the world that derives from it, the individual rediscovers an ethical position, made up of commonality or communitarian roots. Individuals, therefore, feel part of an ethos, structured according to relationships of belonging and solidarity duties. In local communities, such as the one told by Daniels, the fruitful interaction between "me" and "us" is evident. Man does not cancel himself in a libertarian and selfish action but is fully realized as a part of a living whole. 

Daniels so evokes this community eccentricity, and the friction between old and new which has always been the challenge of civilizations, especially among the young. And in doing this she has the merit of not making judgments but of opening a space for reflexivity. Indeed the photographs of Maja Daniels help us to underline the role of photography as a means to retrace experiences, to redefine identity in the form of personal, autobiographical narration and inner conversation. Thus recognizing that there is a need for a new paradigm of subjectivity, less abstract and individualistic as modern totalitarianism. Therefore, more attention to the epistemology of human relations or intersubjectivity is required for facing the postmodern condition of bewilderment.

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Maja Daniels
'Elf Daila'
OTA bound paperback with flaps
22 x 29 cm
MACK
Publication date: April 2019
ISBN: 978-1-912339-37-2

Book available from here

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LINKS
Maja Daniels