Daniel Zachrisson is an independent art director, designer and photographer. Through his photography, he reflects over the tension between observing and engaging, to be distant and close, to contemplate and communicate – and his camera functions as a tool to explore those borders, and to search for a place in-between.
This play of dualities is the main theme of the book, showcasing a range of his recent work. It was given a minimalistic and quiet design to emphasise the mood of the images and let them speak for themselves. Design in collaboration with Daniel.
Scope of work
Book Design
Credits
Photography & Co-design
Daniel Zachrisson
Preface
You wake up at night, not quite knowing where you are. The room is dark. You sharpen your gaze and distinguish some vague contours: maybe a cupboard, the silhouette of a window. At the same time you start searching your mind for images from the evening before, trying to figure out what new place you’re in – or if you’re actually at home.
The brief uncertainty might be unpleasant, but the moment carries a sense of quietude, a sudden feeling of being attached neither to your mind nor to your surroundings – like a temporary dissolution of the incongruence once captured by Paul Auster: “The world is in my head – my body is in the world.”
In a similar way photography implies an encounter between yourself and the world around you, working in fields of tension: between participating and observing, closeness and distance, the reassuring and the unsettling. By using the camera to explore these borders, there’s a possibility for the opposites not to work solely as contradictions, but rather letting several conceptions exist together, in the quiet places in between.
You slowly start to realise where you are. The room appears clearer. You open the curtains and the morning light dazzles you, violently and peacefully at the same time. You close your eyes at first, remaining in the dark for a second, then squint and let your eyes slowly adjust to the world outside.
