Christian Lycke

Hi Christian, could you please shortly introduce yourself?

Hi! I’m from Oslo-ish, born in Toronto. I’ve spent most of my time in or around Oslo. I’ve spent way too long lazing my way through a BA in aesthetics at the Uni of Oslo and now I’m studying landscape architecture. I’m 27 at the moment.

A bit of both. I’ve had a few different phases. I used to be into fashion photography, and then I started feeling like fashion was pretty gross. The stuff that looks like fashion is mostly models from agencies, and the rest is friends and maybe a few bands. I don’t really take pictures of strangers on the street very often. Usually they have their backs turned if I do.

That’s nice to hear! I like to give pictures a sense of lived-in-ness if I can, that it feels like there’s something going on, not just me telling someone to go stand by a thing. Usually, though, that is exactly what I’m doing, and then I wait until the subject is not paying attention, or uncertain of what to do. Mostly because I’m terrible at giving directions, so I just don’t even try. Sometimes it works.

Oh cool, yeah, I’m as big of a sucker for neon lights as everyone else. It makes everything colorful, so it’s pretty natural to want to photograph it. I guess I first saw that kind of lighting in movies from the 70s. I try to not get too inspired by anything specific if I have something I want to photograph, but of course all kinds of things have formed my visual preferences. I’ve liked a lot of different photographers and DOPs/directors, but Kubrick (R.I.P. brah) and Paul Thomas Anderson are still the big faves. I wish I could do stuff like that, just, you know - different. So moving images is kind of the end goal. But it seems far away.

I look for nice settings, that seem a bit out of the ordinary. I don’t like studio work, I like surroundings that inform in some sense. I’ve become interested in taking more informative pictures, lately. But I have to say that I think about this after I’ve already taken the pictures, I don’t really think a lot when I’m working. I just go “ooh, pretty!” and point my camera. I disagree with a lot of people, because I think the equipment is really important. I have a hard time working digitally, my pictures seem flimsier and kind of dull when I use a digital camera. I’m trying to work out a different language for my digital stuff, because I don’t want to be a one trick pony. I got a bit off track - place matters, but equipment matters just as much, is what I was trying to say. To answer the last part: it depends. If I make a story (which I haven’t done in awhile) I usually storyboard things a bit, so that I have a general idea for each picture, and scout locations in advance. They have to work on their own, but also as a group.

I use a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II and a Fuji GW690. My digital is a Sony Alpha 7R with a new 35mm Zeiss lens, and some old lenses with adaptors.

I’m not really sure. I guess I feel like I do a decent job of it, and I don’t have a lot of other talents. That sounds depressing, Plus, I’m not hurting anyone by taking pictures, not producing lots of waste, it’s immaterial in a way. Unless you buy new expensive digital cameras all the time, but that’s not an option for me, because I’m broke most of the time. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Not really. I’ve only ever been on blogs that have asked me, I think. I’m not really very visible online. I’d like to work as a photojournalist, which is hella hard right now. Newspapers aren’t exactly screaming for new photographers. I like books and zines, but I had an exhibition once, and I’m not doing that again. I get nervous if I’m the center of attention. Plus I got really drunk and my mom brought a lot of her friends and grandma. It’s an awkward memory.

I don’t really follow the scene. Seems like there used to be back in the 90s/early 00s, but now I’d say that there are a lot of people doing different things that don’t intersect that much. I’m the wrong person to ask, though.

Maybe a sense of purpose. I’m definitely lacking one.

I don’t really know, but commercial photographers should be more aware of what they’re selling. Fashion people, too. There are a lot ideals that aren’t upheld, because dollah dollah billz ya’ll. I wish all the photojournalists weren’t being fired or phased out, because there are too many shitty scanpix (stock agency) photos in printed news these days.

Yeah, I know people who get by, but you usually have to do a lot of commercial work. I’d rather have another part time job and not have to do that.

I don’t know. Personally I like to be given instructions, so I’d prefer to work for a newspaper or magazines - to have a lot of variation and try to be informative somehow. There are a lot of galleries in Oslo (most of them are pretty crummy), but I think that artists should be able to create their own following. If you can’t generate an interest in the work, then that might be saying something about the art.  

I like Torbjørn Rødland, Christian Belgaux and Erik Mowinckel.