Erika Henriksson


 

Excersice in caring

-the seeing part 

 

It stands in middle of a field, watching passersby with an easy and happy appearance. A piece of the metal has been torn down by the wind but it doesn’t seem to concern it. It has probably never been the overanxious type.

 

This thing is one of many in a series of more than hundered that I have documented over the course of three years.

It all began when I found a lion staring at me, jaws wide open in astonishment. It took quite some time before the second one approached me; a count waiting for correspondence that could be either of good or bad. I didn’t wait along long enough to find out which.

When I took his picture, that’s when I decided to make it a series. After that moment, they came to me much more often. It’s almost as if they go out of their way to find me, begging me to take their picture.

I have entered a new world of recurring creatures; the timid and surprised, the shocked, the presumptuous. And every time I think I’ve seen them all, a brand new type pops up and surprises me.

 

Sometimes I wonder whether the people who put them together really saw them; are they consciously made or creations of chance? I don’t know if it really matters.

 

Once in a while I get a quick chat with a human living in or around one of them. At first, they are generally suspicious of my, somewhat intrusive, behavior. But as I explain the reason as to why I’m so awfully close to their property their suspicion, and the slightly threatening atmosphere, disappear.

I ask them about the characters they inhabit, and they answer that all they have ever seen is a house. Then suddenly, simply because I’ve told them about the characters, they too can see them.

And I think this is part of my fascination with them; once you have started to keep your eyes open, you begin to see them in all their “expressiveness”. And once you’ve seen them, it doesn’t take long before you can hear them talk.