Intercepted

A photographer is also a witness, a spy and a creator of alternative realities. The camera, digital or analog has it’s limits in telling a ”true” story but photography has the ability to step in, take the place of memories, overwrite and reshape a series of events. Through photography some things become visible, others disappear. A bit like the secret ink commonly used by spies during the early days of the first world war, treated in the right way it develops completely but looked at with the wrong methods it becomes unreadable and confusing. In the autumn of 2016 I spent ten days in London, searching through the files regarding my great, great aunt Eva de Bournonville at the National Archives in Kew. During the first world war, 
she played a very small part as one of the most useless spies recruited by the Germans. Eva de Bournonville, a Swedish lady descending from a well known and respected Danish family of ballet choreographers and singers found herself in serious economic trouble at the outbreak of the war. When she was contacted by a Mr. Smith and offered a simple way, without too much effort involved, as he claimed, to get out of debt and earn a lot of money by working for the German Secret Service in London, she accepted. In Kew, everything from letters to trial protocols are kept, although all the facts seemingly lie in those 100 year old files, the true reason for Eva’s crimes still remain blurry. The story of this fortunately misfortunate female spy was the starting point for the intricate web spun by the images in the series ”Intercepted”. A work that received the Recommend Fellowship selected by Ingo Taubhorn and also resulted in the book „Intercepted“ published by Fotohof in 2018.

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