© Per Morten Abrahamsen, courtesy of Hans Alf Gallery

 

How does Jesper Christensenm Trine Dyrholm, Jesper Benzer and Pablo Llambias look with their head in a plastic bag filled with water? Which photographic shapes does the naked body create when placed with a shining light bulb in the dark. At Copenhagen Photo Festival 2012 is the Danish photographer Per Morten Abrahamsen exhibiting “Water Portraits” of a number of people in the Danish art and  culture scene. The method is untested and without compromise when Per Morten Abrahamsen pushes the celebrities to their boundaries to take away their usual expressions.

Everyday we’re confronted with photography in the media and public space. Per Morten Abrahamsen’s method provokes unforeseen reactions in the portrayed, which lays out of their comfort zone and thereby challenges the normal view on portrait photography’s shape and message. In the other part of the exhibition” Light and plastic” is the naked body subject to photographic experiments, when Per Morten Abrahamsen works with light and contrasts, which draw a fictive outline and contour, create openings in the photo and tie the body and environment together. Per Morten Abrahamsen puts a personal touch to international photography with his last work by experimenting with the visual expression form fashion, art and commercial photography. The photos play and confront the photographic layering, which refers to the large spectre in our visual culture.

 

Per Morten Abrahamsen is renowned for his portraits of established names from the cultural scene and business world of Denmark for the monthly magazine Press. His portfolio infludes names like Mærsk Mc-Kinny Møller, Lars von Trier, Connie Nielsen, Mads Mikkelsen and Bjarne Riis. He has put his personal touch on both Danish as well as the international photography and is represented at several large museums and private collections in Denmark and the rest of the world