Hoja Santa – Maciejka (Maya) Art (Dewi Lewis)

Maya Art’s work explores themes of femininity, religious syncretism and cultural diversity. In 2017, she spent a year in the home of Juliana, a lawyer and her teenage daughter, Veronica, in the Afro-Mexican village of Costa Chica, Oaxaca. Juliana introduced her to the women of the community who live relatively separately from the men because of a local history of violence. The work explores three main themes: the anthropology of Afro-Mexican villages, the coming together of Catholic and African spirituality, and the place of women in society

No one is ever prepared to stand in front of photographic prints by Inka and Niclas. If you haven’t seen the Human Nature exhibit at Fotografiska New York quite yet, then you’re missing out on a phenomenal experience. The room that their work is specifically in feels like something right out of Unsolved Mysteries or the X-Files. And from there, you’re compelled to want to know even more about them. Trust us, this is a rabbit hole you want to dive into.

All images by Inka and Niclas. Used with permission. Please visit their website and Instagram @inkaandniclas for more. Human Nature ends at Fotografiska New York on May 19, 2024.

It’s easy to fall in love with the work of these two. As you stare at many of their scenes, certain things just don’t seem quite right. At times, they seem foreboding. At other times, there’s an eerie sense of calm that’s hypnotizing and bewildering. A very important part of what they do involves the use of colors — which then make the mind truly question what’s in front of us. Looking at their images on a mobile device truly doesn’t do them justice. The large-screen desktop does it a bit more. But to truly feel their presence, one must experience their prints.

The Creative World of Inka and Niclas.

The duo of Inka and Niclas have quite different backgrounds. Inka (she) loved the darkroom while Niclas (he) wanted to be a ski photographer. Inka mastered old photographic processes like rubber printing, photogravure, van dyke brown, and cyanotype. Niclas, on the other hand, was an industrial photographer at a steel company. “We then met and became a couple when studying photography in the south of Sweden in our early twenties,” they tell the Phoblographer. “Ideas bounce back and forth between the two of us, one of us may present an idea and then let it go and it gets picked up by the other one years later. It’s a motion that’s been going on ever since the beginning of our collaboration back in 2007.” They’ve been working together for 17 years and they’ve got no idea what it would be like for them to work individually again.

Despite this, they’re often misinterpreting each others’ ideas. It leads them both to be content with results that are sometimes unexpected.

This series was shot on the Fujifilm GFX 50S and a GF 32-64mm F4 R LM WR lens. “The camera is a bit fiddly for our taste, but we regularly produce beautiful super sharp 120x160cm prints from the files,” the duo tells us. “It’s taken saltwater splashes, sand, rain, and -25°C temperatures over and over again without giving up on us.” The duo used to use a Nikon D800 and loves the colors of that camera more. Specifically, they state that they abused it for 6-7 years.

However, Inka and Niclas state that flashguns are a vice of theirs — currently, they’re using a Nissin i60A or the Fuji EF60. Without it, a lot of the magic in their images wouldn’t happen.

The Family Portraits Project

Inka and Niclas do all their work around the idea of humans, nature, and the camera. They’ve been working on family portraits on and off for eight years. As they progress, their creative vision changes.

‘The work is about the present-day ritual of traveling and photographing – photographs as proof to show. It’s about the depiction and consumption of grand scenery and it’s also about the camera and the magic moment of exposure.’ 

Inka and Niclas

In fact, these images are all self-portraits. Inka and Niclas photograph themselves in retroreflective suits. At first, they bounced the flash output off of the suits and straight back into the lens. This gave the feeling of them being anonymous — though it also dives into the idea of being otherworldly. How can one look at these images and not think of aliens at all?

These days, they’re not sure if that’s the sole reason why they do it. “The camera fails its duty to capture us; it erases us but leaves nature,” they state. “Us radiating with light like that also points towards some kind of energy. We see that the series has become (or perhaps was from the beginning) quite mystical, bombastic, and possibly also sinister, in a way that we appreciate.” They’ve heard tons of interpretations at this point.

They’re very big on how their work is presented as well. On social media, you truly don’t have a lot of control. On your own websites, there’s a bit more. But in person with prints, there’s a ton of control. Currently, they’re setting up a large five-room exhibit in Berlin. The due is handling the printing, framing, logistics, podiums, lighting, sound, projections, etc. They’re also working with what they describe as sculptural, non-flat photographs.

Real Photographs

“A lot of our fascination with photography lies in its unavoidable connection to a sliver of time and a place. It may seem basic, but the actual moment of exposure is still a mesmerizing concept.”

Inka and Niclas

Inka and Niclas don’t call themselves purists — but if there’s too much post-production, they feel their work falls apart. They haven’t played with AI imagery a lot, but they accept that some artists might take it on as their sole medium. “One challenge with photography is that the term is way too wide; no one discusses music in general, we need to narrow it down into subgenres much much more than what we have today.”

AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT

The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.

It’s the time of year that many of us are planning our summer getaways, packing our Nikons, naturally. So in this issue’s lead feature, intrepid photographer Iain Afshar shares his tips for getting off the beaten track and capturing your best-ever travel images. 

You don’t have to go to the ends of the earth for incredible scenic shots, though. Landscape pro Ian Asprey leads his apprentice through the Eryri (Snowdonia) national park in North Wales, where an unexpected dusting of spring snow transformed the mountains into something truly magical. 

A ‘nifty fifty’ should be in every photographer’s kit bag, and in our Big Test we rate eight FX and DX lenses with a 50mm-ish effective focal length for Z-mount Nikons, plus highlight the F-mount options that are still available. We also check out the Astrhori 25mm f/2.8 Macro 2-5x, a fun optic that renders subjects up to five times larger than life – and at a bargain price, too. And we pit the Manfrotto Befree Advanced and Novo Helix T50 travel tripods against each other. 

We speak with macro maestro Tony North about his amazing images of minibeasts and mushrooms in the N-Photo interview, while in our On Assignment section, Alfie Bowen tells how his affinity for horses helped him through tough times and set him on the road to be a wildlife photographer. 

Plus we have a plethora of projects to try your hand at, shooting reflections, festivals, birds of prey and making a party photo booth! 

N-Photo: The Nikon Magazine is a monthly magazine that’s written by Nikon enthusiasts for Nikon enthusiasts, you can be sure that all the content is 100% relevant to you! So for the best Nikon-focused news, reviews, projects, and a whole lot more, subscribe to N-Photo today – with our unmissable subs deal!

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