Last summer, I spent 10 days travelling through Norway with my partner. We toured Jotunheimen, a national park in the south criss-crossed with ravines, streams and waterfalls. I’d had an idea of an image I wanted to shoot, and Jotunheimen seemed the perfect place.
I wanted to photograph myself in the midst of a waterfall, but lots of the ravines and waterfalls we passed were too dangerous. One day, on a small, unpaved road at quite high altitude, I spotted a couple of streams converging in this black expanse of water.
We stopped the car. I tested how slippery the rocks were, how cold the water was. About 20 metres further on there was a very steep drop, but this spot was safe. The stream ran wide and the darkness of the underlying rock acted as a frame for my body.
I set up the camera for my partner and took my position in the stream. It took a few attempts to get it right. During one of them, a bus drove past me naked in the waterfall. The passengers all started cheering.
This particular image captures the ways in which we are all subject to external forces – things that seem to be eroding us constantly. I wanted the viewer to answer the questions the picture poses. Will he survive? Will he be swept away by the current? Or will he keep it together?
Making these images is a form of therapy for me. This one is taken from the third instalment of a trilogy I’ve spent the last few years shooting that documents my struggles with my mental health, and OCD in particular. Each series documents a new phase: falling ill, going through therapy and leaving behind some of the worst years of my life.
Even as a child, I found it extremely difficult to talk about what was going on inside my head or to communicate my emotions and needs. I started making these artworks because it was a way for me to vent.
At my worst I was intensely anxious. But these stunts, whether in freezing cold water or suspended at high altitude, gave me brief moments of nothingness in my mind. All I could focus on was the moment. The ice-cold water or altitudes made the anxiousness I felt feel justified: there was a reason for it. And after the stunts, I felt nothing – in a good way. It gave me a release, a complete blankness that I craved during those times.
I don’t use nudity just because it is interesting, but also because it’s a way for me to be honest. Without clothes, there’s nothing you can protect yourself with. And aesthetically, I think it’s pleasing because of the contrasts it creates between the dark, hard rock, or the inky expanses of cold water against the warmth of human skin.
These works are also about the relationship between humans and the natural world. In Finland, my home country, we mythologise our relationship to nature. Yet we have spoiled our lakes with eutrophication and felled old forests to feed the economy. My work is about building different relationships, both with myself during my dark times, and with the world in which we live. My work situates myself in nature, not as a conqueror over it.
I held an exhibition in Helsinki last autumn of this final instalment of the trilogy, a conclusion to years of work. It also signalled the end of my time in therapy. It felt like a moment of recognition of how much better I felt in myself. It was a form of closure.
• More of Svante Gullichsen’s work can be found on his Instagram. He is represented by Albumen Gallery.
Svante Gullichsen’s CV
Born: 1994, Turku, Finland.
Trained: Self-taught.
Influences: “Modern Finnish self portraitists such as Arno Rafael Minkkinen and Elina Brotherus, and old Finnish masters including Hugo Simberg, Tove Jansson and Akseli Gallen-Kallela.”
High point: “In spring 2022 I won the Hellerau residency prize in Dresden, Germany. Despite the terrible state of my mental health I went, and while hiking, felt like I was getting my life back. That OCD didn’t keep me anymore as a hostage.”
Low point: “Recently I gathered eight people, loads of props and camera gear to shoot in the thick Helsinki fog. As soon as we arrived the fog cleared and the pictures looked terrible. You can’t always succeed. But it’s necessary to take risks when making art. Otherwise you get stuck.”
Top tip: “Take pictures of yourself: there is no one to judge. Try even the craziest ideas, you learn self acceptance, and you also learn how to guide your models better.”
