Sarah Meurle is a Swedish skateboarder; her other great passion is photography. She shoots skateboarding from time to time but her photographic work bends in a far more original and experimental direction. Here, she talks us through her five favourite pictures, and tells us why she believes coming from a Nordic nation, with long dark bleak winters, has not hindered her creativity. If anything the opposite is true.
The first camera I ever had was a gift from my dad’s friend. It was this blue plastic camera from Camel, (yes, the cigarette brand). But around the age of twelve or so I remember I had one that was a Kodak which shot APS film. At 16 when I was at the Bryggeriet high school I studied photography and I bought a digital camera, a Nikon d80. I used that for two years and then my friend Alana Paterson gave me her old Nikon f100 which brought me back to analogue.
I am more interested in the overall feeling of a bigger portion of photographs than the subject itself. I enjoy abstractions and the perception of light, sometimes transformed by the camera, and sometimes I take it a step further and use other techniques in the darkroom in order to leave room for “mistakes”, I do a lot of works that are cameraless as well.
“I enjoy abstractions and the perception of light…”
I’ve been studying photography for three years now. And there’s really nothing more inspiring than looking at your friends’ works, talking about it and helping each other evolve. I get waves of inspiration where I get a lot of ideas, and sometimes none.