Exotic studio sun on Sun King plates
When Holger Kilumets appeared in the Estonian photo scene, he was like a revelation. Now Tanel’s jewellery has started hovering in Holger’s taut, charged still-lifes. The last collaboration with him brought the Sun King porcelain into focus.
Scenes from Holger's studio where he is recording the Sun King plate series
Tanel asked Holger to describe the idea of the Sun King plate image series. Holger’s main inspiration was the fantastic colour combinations hidden in the plates themselves: “I wanted to bring them into the surrounding environment and create contrasting but harmonizing wholes. To really bring the compositions to life, I brought in various exotic fruits to add an accent with their multifaceted colours and textures. It is always extremely exciting to work with organic materials. I especially like how they work with their wealth of detail on clean surfaces.”
Characteristically for Holger, he played with these scenes somewhere on the border between abstraction and reality. On the one hand, constructions of clearly geometric forms could also resemble imaginary banquet scenes.
Since Holger is an excellent light master, he justifies his light choices as follows: “These exotic kaleidoscopic patterns actually required contrasting light with sharp shadows that would radiate the sunny warmth of Marrakesh.”
You've brought your visual idiom into Estonian visual culture: a metaphysical world with consummately taut composition and precisely titrated colours. How did this marvellous world begin?
I think it started with a love for the abstract world of colours and forms. The state that precedes language and meanings – it’s liberating through its simplicity.
How much space do you leave in your work for chance?
It’s very rare for me to know exactly what final result I have to end up with. I am a big believer in process and the finest solutions usually unfold during the work. Pictures that are over-planned usually end up toothless, everything is too much in place in them. Something has to remain open so that there is also room for the viewer. It’s a feeling that can be apprehended most clearly in the course of doing.
What is the difference between photographing things and people? Why is the world of things your preference?
Working with inanimate objects is interesting for me because I have to somehow get them to work, and transform them from a passive state to something charged and living. Photography for me is a means for dealing with some broader aesthetic problems. I feel my work has more of a kinship with sculpture or graphic design than with other branches of photography.
Together with Holger, we have also won a Silver Egg in the Golden Egg creative festival with the Metafisica series in 2021.
