Translation: Pamela Starbird 

Apparently nothing is what it appears to be on the surface. At least not in the photo-based works of Jakob Jensen.  His pictures pretend to be showing something that they are not, and the artist does not reveal where the manipulation takes place.  He does not use computer manipulation, but registers what the eye sees with his camera.  We do not necessarily see what we think we see. 

In Superlandscape, 1999, an apparently well-known landscape functions as a reference point for the artist’s examination of how to present the problem of nature versus culture.  We immediately allow ourselves to be seduced by the bright blue and green colors that remind us of a warm summer day in a Danish landscape.  But then again, not really. The camera angle makes it impossible to orient oneself in the picture, which makes one suspect that the picture is actually a synthetic fabrication, whose tension spans the contrast between the artificial and the organic. 

In a later series, Arizona from 2002-2004, it is the simple details which are in focus.  Jensen makes use of a very slight depth of field in such a way that a large part of the picture remains in diffuse fog.  But for Jakob Jensen, it is not just a question of zooming in on a detail and elevating it to the main motif of the picture.  In his pictures there is a more radical take that plants doubts about the ability of photography to register anything credible whatsoever.  But it is also about the extent to which the viewer is able to see, to disconnect from expectations, conceptions and experiences. 

A corresponding strategy is found in the video work Starlight Pixel Soup, 2003, which records the starry night sky.  Orions Belt is reduced to black spots on a whitish-gray pixel background.  As the camera’s autofocus zooms in and out, a single star is sharp, while the others are lost in the ’soup’ of pixels.  The detail is reduced to a part of the entirety, but the viewer does not gain a true perspective. 

In his works, Jakob Jensen balances on the edge between the recognizable, the visibly existing and the credibility in what is seen.  He raises doubts about the degree to which what the eye sees is actually that which exists in reality.  Not only is the trustworthiness of photography at stake, but also confidence in our sight, which registers the world.