In Conversation With: Anja Niemi: b. 1976, Norway

GK: So there’s some clear patterns in terms of building quite particular characters in your projects. I’m also thinking of the boxer you portrayed in The Blow – what inspired that series?

AN: Yes, The Blow came right before the pandemic. When I made it, I was going through something really hard; I was searching for some resilience, so it was about imagining someone with the strength to keep getting up. When the pandemic happened, it made even more sense, because we were all in that state. I never imagined her as a winner necessarily, but she just kept working at it. After that, my series The Rider also featured a character who wasn’t strictly ‘succeeding’, but instead on a journey – which was closely related to my own at that time. It’s as if she’s trying to achieve something, not really getting there, but learning to find beauty and enjoyment in the process.

GK: It’s interesting that you talk primarily about characters in the way we might expect from a writer or a director. How did this creative approach emerge?

AN: I was born with a big imagination, but I lacked the confidence in my vocabulary to speak my mind or articulate my ideas. I was horrible at school, and I never really found my thing, but from the minute I picked up a camera – I shot a roll of film when I was 18 – that’s pretty much all I’ve done since. Photography was a way to tell stories without words, which was magic for me! 

I also have this other thing where I’m not that comfortable with people, and I never really have been. I never imagined working in a big crew, or making something for someone else. When you start out, you’re in your bedroom trying these small ideas without people watching what you’re doing – you’re in your own small bubble. So that’s really how it started: I would use myself because I wanted to be alone. From there it expanded, the ideas got bigger, and somehow you end up having a small audience. When you realise someone’s watching, you have to pay attention to what you’re saying.

GK: So it’s always been a very personal process somehow?

AN: Yes! Even if it wasn’t about me wanting to share my life, it’s about wanting to tell a story that has to come from me. Across these projects, I’ve always wondered how not be in the pictures! It’s impractical, and I don’t necessarily want to be in front of the camera, but I never found a way for that to make sense. Who else would it be, and how would I tell them how I feel? It wouldn’t work. So what runs through everything is the journey, and as soon as I dared to step out into the world, everything got bigger. That was a really big thing for me – to dare to go out and be seen making.

GK: I like that idea of trajectory – of you starting off in the hotel room and slowly getting braver: into the big sweeping landscapes we see in She Could Have Been a Cowboy, for instance? 

AN: Exactly! She Could Have Been a Cowboy was a really big change for me. It was the first time I was really stepping out into nature on a big solo journey. That story was about a character who was living a life she didn’t want – she dreamt of being someone else. I wanted to take that on, and I really felt her emotions throughout that whole journey. I was in the US for about a month, driving through the country with my costumes and my camera, daring to step out and be her. In a lot of the pictures she’s standing there with pride, or on a horse – so I just had to own it! That led me to want more of that, to make the experience and process bigger.

GK: You’ve explained that you’re essentially a one-woman-band, but what’s like to play stylist, location scout, cinematographer, director and actress simultaneously?

AN: I keep asking why I made this so difficult! Especially when I see my ideas getting bigger – I’m like, ‘how can I pull this off by myself?’ But it comes back to that personal aspect. How could I let someone else choose the clothes? The costumes are more than clothes, they’re character triggers. One of my favourite pieces is a pair of vintage black and white rodeo chaps. They used to belong to a woman named Mary, who’s now 87; when I put them on, I imagine her wearing them as a young rodeo rider. It really makes the character come to life! To have someone else find the clothes would feel wrong – so I have to do that. Or maybe I just want to! And we’ve spoken about the acting side of things, of being the character. Physically, the hardest thing is when you’re on location and working against weather or time or animals, and simply the act of carrying everything: costumes, cameras, walking through woods, climbing up mountains. It’s not very practical, but it has to be done. There is a reward to it all though, seeing your idea through in every detail all the way to the end.

Installation view of She Could Have Been a Cowboy at Fotografiska Talinn

I’ve never been a movie director, so I don’t know, but I feel like there’s similarities in my process – my work tends to start with an idea, then a character, I think about who she is, what’s she doing, what she wants to say. Then I draw a storyboard around that, but the images are never meant to be read from beginning to the end. You can read them in any order, and the pieces are scattered with an open ending. 

GK: There’s quite some Americana in characters like that, too: do you see these works being rooted in a particular geography?

AN: I think the location is almost like the character – it could be anywhere, anyone, anytime. Even the costumes are mixed up with 20s, 40s and 70s stuff. It’s mainly about how it makes you feel, but indeed I do keep getting drawn to America because of that cinematic, iconic aspect. It’s like the cowboy: we know that character, and it’s as if it comes from a place of fiction. People often ask me why I don’t photograph in Norway, but it’s my backyard. I needed to go elsewhere to play out the stories – places that felt fictional to me because I don’t live there. I think I might have had a change of heart here actually having recently discovered that there is magic here too, I just wasn't looking at it the right way.

GK: What is it that makes photography your medium of choice?

AN: I’ve said this before, but I often imagine my work as a very slow silent movie. A film has a certain duration, a beginning and an end. It has movement to create emotion and sound to steer how you feel. Although I often wonder what it would be like to make my images move, I’ve felt really content so far with what I can say through photography. I like the room It leaves for personal projection, and the story never really has to end. Recently I’ve been thinking about how to slow it down even more, creating more with my hands – something more organic. But I think my work will always have the photograph as it's back bone.

GK: And is that organic quality something we can expect in your new project, A Naturalist Guide to Magic? I’d love to know more about the project!

AN: I’ve been working on this series for a while, without realising it at first. It really just evolved from the ongoing process of learning how to talk to a rather complex American Quarter horse. I’ve been trying to understand him – and in the process, I’ve ended up trying to heal us both. At the start of our journey, he was very clear about two things: that he wasn’t fine and neither was I. It was really overwhelming! I was flooding myself with information, opening up every door I could think of in search of answers. About a year went by, and I realised I basically hadn’t worked throughout that time. The horse had taken over my entire world. Then I started to intertwine the two – resuming the journey, but beginning to photograph, keeping my focus on how we communicate and all the new things I was discovering.

GK: It sounds like a huge challenge in every sense! 
AN: It was, but he was opening my mind to a world I was previously unaware of. I was becoming better at listening to my intuition, and I eventually felt as if we were having two-way conversations. I could hear him, which made we wonder, if I’m having a conversation with a horse, who else could I talk to? Can we talk to trees, can we talk to plants, rocks even? When you step into nature and look at it from that perspective, it really changes your vision of the world. Most of them might not talk back but I don't think it matters. Either way I think we can benefit from treating the world as if it is alive. He also made me question everything I thought I knew about being with horses. If you’re having a conversation with someone you view as your friend and your equal, the dominant relationship no longer feels right. I realised I had to find another way. Could he have more choices, decide where we go, for instance? Can he say that he doesn’t want to be ridden today? Is it ok for him to say no? Lots of questions came from this process of trying to figure out what needed to be fixed, but then it became even bigger – about how we can be one, or equal. He certainly made me realise that he wasn’t the only one who needed to listen.

ANJA NIEMI, A NATURALIST GUIDE TO NATURE, #40, 2024

GK: It’s almost as if you could be talking about the power dynamic between photographer and subject!

AN: I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s interesting. And to come back to your question about whether the project has a more natural feel – I’ve learnt so many things from him, and one of them is that I need to slow down. I want to notice things, to be more aware. I started meditating, practicing conscious breathing, drawing, reading poems, anything that would slow down my thoughts. I wanted to be able to clear my mind so that he could feel my energy and be comforted, feel safe. That was the hardest one for me, to stand next to him with enough strength and calmness to put him at ease. I started reading him Maya Angelou’s poem Still I Rise, planting my feet steady on the ground as I read with confidence and rhythm. It would shift my focus, and every time he seemed to calm and soften his expression. We’ve since progressed to a wide selection of poems but we always come back to this one: it’s something about the combination of strength and rhythm I think. But I‘ve really enjoyed the effect that poetry’s had on us both, and I’ve even started playing with jotting down words that arrive spontaneously. If my earlier work felt like short films, maybe these new ones feel more like small intuitive poems?