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Photography Culture

The Dark and Shy Self Portraiture of Steffen Stranden

Chris Gampat
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03/23/2014
2 Mins read
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All images by Steffen Stranden. Used with permission.

Steffen Stranden is photography enthusiast that hails from Norway. We ran into his photos on the Analog subreddit and fell in love with the scenes. Steffen worked on a self-portraiture series that brings humanity back to nature while also incorporating eerie yet almost hidden elements to the images that reminds us of dark fantasies from childhood that grew up and evolved to incorporate more mature themes.

We chatted a bit with Steffen about the photo series and why he made the creative choices that he did.

Phoblographer: What gave you the inspiration for your photos?

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Steffen: My photographs are heavily inspired by one of my favorite photographers, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, who’s been taking self-portraits in the wild for a very long time. I also got inspiration from Bill Brandt and specifically his beach series. I knew I wanted to do something with self-portraiture in nature, but that I wanted to make it my own. I got the idea that I wanted to juxtapose nature vs the urban landscape. I want to bring the human body back to nature by showing (hopefully) pleasant and natural images, while my photographs from the urban landscape have a more bizarre and unsettling side to them.

Phoblographer: A lot of your self-portraits don’t feature you at all. What’s your intention in the creation of the images for the series? Specifically, what about you are you trying to get across?

Steffen: All my photographs in this series are actually of me. I had someone (like Arno Rafael Minkkinen in many of his images) push the shutter for me. I would frame the composition, set the exposure and tell my assistant how I wanted it.

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The reason I started this project is because I have lived in big cities for a while now and I miss being around nature. Forests, mountains, big open landscapes. Therefore, through my photographs I want to show my take on living in the urban landscape vs the rural landscape.

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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