Skeleton Key Press, 2024. Edition of 500 copies. Hardcover, 152 pp., 88 b/w illustrations. Photographs by Kjetil Karlsen. Text by Arno Rafael Minkkinen (English). Design by Russell Joslin.
Kjetil Karlsen’s debut monograph, Watching the Silence, invites readers to venture into northern Norway’s isolated and remote landscapes, seen through the author’s singular lens. Here, Karlsen’s life experiences are distilled into a world that is familiar yet, intriguingly, otherworldly. The book showcases nearly 90 black and white plates, divided into six chapters, and printed in dark, rich, and cold tones that capture the beauty and extremes of the distinct elements of the far north.
Karlsen’s photographs serve as gateways to mythological and psychological themes, unveiling the profound connection between the body, soul, and nature. As Arno Rafael Minkkinen, the renowned photographer whose expansive foreword opens the book, eloquently describes, Watching the Silence is “a kind of unguided tour by ghosts, one-legged wanderers, and soulless strangers performing their gravity-defying stunts, tender couplings, and displaying their psychic energies in an enigmatically desolate yet hardly unwelcoming landscape.”
Watching the Silence is an extraordinary debut. It is a captivating, exquisitely curated collection of Karlsen’s finest works, hardbound in cloth. It offers a unique and thought-provoking perspective on the beauty and extremes of the natural and supernatural worlds that promises to leave a lasting impression on the reader.
