The series Hearth is exploration of the ephemeral quality that sets apart the architectural framework of a human dwelling from a place of comfort and love.

While our idea of home is often connected to a physical place, the sense of home appears to be rooted in the relationship between person and place, and as such it does not lend itself easily to visual representation.Instead of evoking a sense of home in its instances, arbitrary examples of infinite variations, Hearth seeks to apprehend the concept of home in its absence. It is the vacuum in the mise-en-scène. Uncomfortable spaces of unfulfilled potential, stripped of context and connection that compel the onlooker to take shelter in memories of home. The point of departure for the series were miniature scale models of classic Danish functionalist houses from the 50’s.Photographing these miniatures allowed me to capture and reconstruct these archetypical homes in thier embryonic state, juxtaposing the familiar warmth Danish suburban family villas with the formal and distant composition of the images.

About Lise Johansson

Lise Johansson is a photographer based in Copenhagen, educated at Vera – School of Art and Design and Media College, Viborg. Her education at the Media College has given her professionally photographical and technical skills, though she has managed to keep her own unique and artistic approach towards the medium. Blending both analoque and digital techniques, the arbitraty, blurry and the focused and perfect. Johansson is creating mystical and dark places in between reality and imagination, in between the conscious and unconscious, the known and unknown. The works are letting the spectator left alone, in his own confrontation with long forgotten places in the mind, forced to reinvent the reality the photographs are presenting. [Official Website]