Out in the open nature with the sky as his roof, near sea, oceans and islets, fine art photographer Asla finds peace and solitude. He seeks out untamed nature, environments where the tones of the sky and the surface of the sea contain palettes and forms that he never tires of.
Read more about the Norwegian photographer’s eternal studies with nature.
The whole world is his workplace in the quest for the perfect light. And the ultimate frame. He can find something interesting in the light at different times of the day, where oceans and sky unfold in front of his eyes with visions he has never captured before. When these inexplicable atmospheric phenomena occur, he is there to capture them. Asla’s images are not just about what is seen but equally about the unseen, that which reaches the senses. Observing the light in the sky, feeling the air, and listening to the rhythmic sounds of the sea’s surface do something to him. It’s about presence. Something pure. Genuine and meditative. He opens himself to nature and emphasizes that he takes pictures with nature, not of it. When those rare glimpses of something resembling divine light reveal themselves to him, he attempts to perpetuate that exact moment.
The few subjects that pass through his critical eye after thousands of exposures possess abstract qualities from which he creates images of finely tuned aesthetics. There is a touch of Mark Rothko in Asla’s photographic universe. Vertical color fields and a picture surface that feels vibrating are things they have in common. It’s almost as if the tones contain poetry about existence. “They act as sensory meditation objects charged with emotions,” said art historian Øystein Ustvedt about Rothko’s paintings in D2 on May 10 this year. The same can be said of Asla’s fine art photographs.
A lot of time is spent waiting. Anticipating.
“To create is also to search”, he says.
“To create provocative art is not for me. It would not feel genuine. I am not a provocative person. I have to be honest in my expression and focus on what captures my interest. The work has to be genuine in order to have lasting value, or any value.”
He feels completely free in his art. Finally, he controls everything himself, without compromising with commercial clients. In this context, a quote from Asgeir Jorn’s “Face to Face” (1944) partly conveys what Asla means by freedom in art: “Art is a way of life, beautiful, ugly, impressive, disgusting, meaningless, gloomy, self-contradictory, etc. It makes no difference as long as it is life flowing powerfully forth.”
Asla’s method is to take in some part of the world, where visual noise is excluded. For many years, he has lived a hectic life as a professional photographer in the USA, based in Los Angeles, where he still lives and works. He has achieved professional success but has maintained a down-to-earth and humble demeanor.
“For me there is no contradiction in being grounded and being self-confident”, says the photographer who grew up in Drammen. The initial plan was to become a lawyer, but after a year as a student at the University of Oslo, he traveled to Paris and decided to pursue practical education in the photographic field by working his way up to a level that led to being hired as an assistant to the famous photographer Herb Ritts in Los Angeles in 1996. Later, Asla became a renowned photographer himself, with elements of artistic expressions reflected in his images. The minimalist visual language with classical simplification, as well as sculptural and abstract forms, contributed to Asla getting assignments for global brands.
Erik Asla works meticulously and laser-focused when he decides to do something he believes in. After eight years of experimenting with photographing oceans, sky and horizons, in addition to being inspired by modern American contemporary art such as Robert Irwin, James Turrell and Agnes Martin, Asla is also inspired by the paintings of Kåre Tveter – who painted almost transparent images of the arctic light. The Norwegian fine art photographer, born in 1964, had his first solo exhibition, in Palm Springs (2017) at the private gallery Janssen Artspace, with the exhibition title ‘The Stillness of Motion’. This project has later been expanded and exhibited in Oslo at Galleri Semmingsen (2018) and Drammens Museum (2021).
This year, Asla is presenting a new exhibition, ‘Elsewhere’ at Galleri Semmingsen in Frogner, which opens on August 29th and runs until September 22th. Here, he showcases environments he has been working on for the past three years. In some of the works, parts of a landscape emerge in the form of mountains, cliffs, islets, and skerries.
Capturing the mysticism in the light on the blue planet seems to be an eternal study for fine art photographer Erik Asla.
For more info: erikasla.com
Norwegian Photographer’s Eternal Studies with Nature, written by Anne Marit Muri. Muri is a former editor of, among others, Magasinet Kunst, and has written reports on art and culture for a number of years.
She is the author and initiator of the book, Kunstnerliv, portraits of 19 contemporary artists, which was published in 2018, voted the year’s most beautiful art book in 2019 by Grafill. She is also the author of the book, Det gåtefulle lyset, Svalbard, which was published in autumn 2022, by the publisher Utenfor Allfarvei in Harstad.
Muri is educated at the University of Oslo and Bergen. She is currently working on a master’s degree in media development, under the auspices of Oslo Met, in addition to developing new book projects and is a writer for several magazines. She is a regular writer on fine arts for Daily Scandinavian.
All photograhs © Erik Asla (except portrait photo of Anne Marit Muri)
Feature image (on top): Erik Asla, Malibu (private)