`Take It As It Comes´ Lisbeth Johansen

“TAKE IT AS IT COMES”

LISBETH JOHANSEN

Take it easy, baby Take it as it comes Don't move too fast And you want your love to last Oh, you've been movin' much too fast

The Doors “Take it as it comes�

TAKE IT AS IT COMES As decades come and go, they all become important and relevant as one decade feeds the other with the nutrition of culture. Culture being the most interesting and possibly the most flawed element of human behaviour that never stays rooted to one specific place. Whatever we do in later life and how we do it is born out of our childhood years. It is in these formative years that the seeds are firmly planted that will persuade and influence the outcome of the life that we will pursue as an adult.

"Take it as it comes" is a handpicked selection of photographs by the photographer Lisbeth Johansen who is a child of the seventies, having been born in 1973. It was in the seventies, the decade of long hair, that fashion really began to spread its wings and broaden a spectrum which ranged from hot pants to bell bottoms. Where the disco look as inspired by John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever" became a firm favourite, complete with 3 piece suits for men and rayon or jersey wrap dresses for women. Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground were the chief hosts of a decade of burgeoning decadence in New York which was rapidly aspiring to assume its role as the centre of the cultural universe.

Drugs and alcohol were rampant additions to a lifestyle that claimed the lives of Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Gram Parsons to name but a few. The photographic scene throughout the seventies is often considered the decade when`the everyday´emerged full fledged as a theme for photography. The `decisive moment´ as was championed by Cartier Bresson gave way to spontaneous subjectivity. Anything and everything became worthy of photographing.

As has been previously stated one decade feeds and leads into the next and the late seventies witnessed the fracturing of culture as the punk scene entered centre stage. During this era, the political sphere was dominated by the ideas of former US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the music scene was transformed by punk and the birth of hip-hop, and our everyday lives were radically altered by a host of technological developments, from the Sony Walkman and the ATM to the appearance of MTV and the first personal computers. The influence of Thatcher and Reagan pervaded the entire ‘8os stimulated and fed by the economic theories of Milton Friedman.

The concept of state care and protection for all classes of the population began to be seriously eroded by ideas of free market enterprise. The generation of young people from the poorer areas of Northern England invaded the art schools of London and a true bulwark of anti-culture to oppose the rigorous destruction of the working class was established. Or so it seemed. In these modern times several decades later we can witness that this was where the seeds to the lifestyle of `greed is good´ got the upper hand in all walks of the society and a real division of the have and have nots was truly created and survives to this present day.

In Denmark, the Free State of Christiania flourished, sold hash by the kilo and changed from an alternative culture into a tourist culture. The building boom and credit card lifestyle took root and the only opposition was the BZ squatter and youth movement that was prepared to take on both the politicians and the police in opposing speculative `land grabs´ with the mindset firmly set upon the crown jewel of Christiania and its 85 acres of prime site potential land development. It was here at the start of the nineties that Lisbeth Johansen embarked upon photographing individual images that form part of the series `Take it as it comes´. The title of the series takes its name from a song title by The Doors from the album entitled "The Doors" released in 1967.

The works that have been selected for exhibiting are a part of a larger series of analogue black and white images taken in a period of time, 2000 - 2003. Geographically all the images are Scandinavian with the majority of them shot in Denmark. The choice of the working title for the series of photographs alludes to a genre of music that acts as a poetic veil enshrouding the works in a veneer of appropriateness for the images to hand. We are looking at a sequence of 12 selected images that are organised in a visual order that is determined by content, tone and the literal pulse of the work as an aid to seeing the work as a `whole´ or as individual pieces. The series raises an issue that is as applicable for the start of the ‘70s as it was for the start of the ‘80s, in fact for any young photographer who is setting out on the road of creative martyrdom - that it is not so much the question of how to photograph, but rather what to photograph, and why.

The photography of Lisbeth Johansen is rooted in an individual niche of her own making that adheres to the previously mentioned adage of the photographing of anything and everything. This is not as easy as it sounds, the anything and everything may sound like a woolly liberal concept, but it is a concept plagued with intuitive rules implemented by the photographer herself. Rules that are bent and reshaped within the space of a moment´s heartbeat to suit the subject of the enterprise at hand. The images selected for "Take it as it comes" fit the musical identity they have been tainted with. They do have a voyeuristic empathy for the ‘70s and the ‘80s, as if the photographer has taken with her the silent brooding observations of the tones and moods that span the decades of her childhood and supplanted them in the creative arena of her adult choice of occupation. All the images have a `real time´ impact. Nothing appears engineered or digitally retouched, with the light being used to direct our focus on the subjectivity of the image. Photographers of the `right stuff´ distinguish themselves by possessing a keen eye, and as it is with so many other talents it boils down to the basic fact that you have a keen eye or you don´t. Lisbeth Johansen is a fortunate member of the photographic fraternity in that she is the owner of a keen eye and she uses it to capture the imperfect, perfectly. Her images have an instant impact, they are personal, poetic and shimmer in the area of a purgatory that lies between being blessed or damned but either way land firmly in the arena of `photographie noir´.

Galvin Harrison, Copenhagen 2014.

LISBETH JOHANSEN

“TAKE IT AS IT COMES”

Chief Curator Joint Curator Joint Curator

Galvin Harrison Paolo Sturiale Robert Klun

Exhibition Text Document Graphics Proof + Text Editing

Galvin Harrison Galvin Harrison Sandy Thornland

Sturiale Contemporary Arts

:

Venice / Ljubljana / Abu Dhabi

http://sturiale.it/ http://www.renegadescreen.com/

All images are the sole copyright of Lisbeth Johansen, courtesy of Sturiale Contemporary Arts 2015