Description |
Day for Night is the cinematic technique used when filming a night scene during the day. It's a standard technique used all through film history. The title of Francois Truffaut's film La Nuit Americane is a reference to this. In his work Joachim Koester has adapted the Day for Night technique to still photography and made a series of photographs from Christiania a squatters community near the center of Copenhagen. Christiania was founded in 1971 by 'slumstormere' breaking down the fence surrounding 'BŒdsmandsstr¾des kaserne', occupying an abandoned military base. Within a few years, the appearance of the base was totally transformed with the original military structure giving away to a new set of intentions. The idea of the squatters was to create a city that allowed more personal freedom than anywhere else, and today Christiania still employs a collective economy and does not submit to the laws of Denmark. By documenting Christiania through the Day for Night technique Joachim Koester has created a different kind of imagery. Day for Night; both day and night in the same image. Like Christiania; dream and reality - the dream of creating a perfect community compared to the reality of the place 25 years later. The photographs in the projection can be seen as an attempt to trace these ideas focusing on the spacial transformation of the place, from military base to 'Free City', as the main narrative. |