Helene Schmitz is among Sweden's most internationally recognized photographers and she has a contemporary message about the human impact on nature.
- The loss of our last forests with old and dying trees, it is actually a disaster, she says.
Meditation or mourning song
The exhibition Dreamland has human extraction of nature as its theme and is about the Swedish forest, the forest industry and the mining industry.
- Dreamland is a kind of meditation or mourning song about how we have both seen landscapes and other living species as objects for our own benefit.
Too often in my work it is about the invasion, transformation and how something turns into something else.
The Dreamland suite is photographed in Dalarna, Skellefteå and Gällivare.
The idea for the exhibition came when Helene Schmitz was on her way to Västmanland after the great forest fire and traveled mile after mile through landscapes of straight black tree trunks.
"Hope inspires debate"
She thought that the similar tree trunks looked more like barcodes than traditional forest.
- Forest fires have always been natural, but that it burns more often and more violently is due to climate change.
At the Swedish embassy in Washington, they have chosen to highlight Helene Schmitz's art, among other things for its environmentally conscious message.
- I hope that the exhibition Dreamland arouses emotions and thoughts, and that it inspires debate, says Karin Olofsdotter, Sweden's ambassador to the United States.