Foreword to Janne Klerk’s book The Coasts of Denmark
“How fairly smiles the Danish coast” – when it isn’t being threatened by storms like Allan, Bodil,
and Carl.
By Lisbeth Bonde
The photographer Janne Klerk has created a visual heroic poem about the Danish coasts. She has
thoroughly photographed all of Denmark’s extensive coastlines, the areas where fastland ends and
water takes over. At times this zone between land and water manifests itself sharply, such as one
sees in an amputated cliff that has been battered by storms and raging breakers. At other times it is a
mild littoral meadow that delineates a barely noticeable transition between land and sea, between
green and blue. Thanks to Janne Klerk’s eye for the grandeur and rich variation of the coasts we can
now experience the ocean and the coastal landscape in extenso.
Sometimes Janne Klerk has positioned her tripod on a hilltop, giving us a panoramic view over the
endless landscape, which appears as a gently modulated, green Lilliputian country. At other times
she gets close and zooms in on the rich, textural, and coloristic qualities of the coasts, with an often
characteristic, sculptural physiognomy, or she may board a fishing boat or visit surfers at Klitmøller
Strand.
The sea is omnipresent in Denmark, where the extensive coastline is more than 7000 kilometers
long, due to the many fjords, bays, and islands. There are no fewer than 443 named islands
belonging to the country, and no matter where we find ourselves in Denmark, we are no farther than
100 kilometers from a coast. The Danish coasts are unparalleled breathing spaces. Here we meet the
immensity of the universe. The heavens arch above us, and the wide horizon unfolds before us, so
we can fasten our gaze on infinity.
Tenaciously and persistently Janne Klerk sought out the obscure coastal areas or set up her tripod at
well-known and iconic tourist destinations, from which she has elicited new visual truths. The result
is a book in two volumes: the first depicting the mainland, Jutland, and the second, the islands. Her
travels brought her far and wide. Everything was planned in advance, but on route she invited
chance to accompany her, in accordance with the idea that having made a plan, one can easily
deviate from it. Many of the locations are surreally, breathtakingly beautiful. Others are raw,
quotidian, and rustic. The entire spectrum is included – also industrial Denmark, as it appears in the
section on Fanø, for example, which ranges from the wide littoral meadows, where sheep graze as
they have for centuries, to Esbjerg’s industrial waterfront, with the gigantic smokestack of the heat
and power station thrusting aloft like a mammoth ruler.
With curiosity as the motivating force Janne Klerk has trod in the footsteps of the explorer and
surveyor Carsten Niebuhr (1733 – 1815), but while he mapped Arabia geographically, culturally,
and linguistically, and described the richness of nature, flora, and fauna in alien places, Janne Klerk
has no intention of documenting our domestic coasts scientifically.
Janne Klerk has created pictures. Like the truth-seeking poet she is, she has given back to us what
many a person who spends her life facing a computer screen no longer notices. With her eye for
exciting angles she gives us a surprising new view of our surroundings. With her photographs she
has immortalized that which in a brief time will be altered – by geological factors or for societal
reasons.
The project to photograph the Danish coasts took three years. For many of the pictures this implies
patience, where Janne Klerk waited for the right moment, for example when the seal turned toward
her at Grenen, or when the starlings flocked together in the “black sun” formation and created an
ethereal arabesque in the sky above the coastal mudflats of southwestern Jutland, or when the sun
came out between the clouds and colored the sea a sparkling gold.
Janne Klerk seizes the moment when it comes, but she also demonstrates timely precision in
making certain she is on the spot.
Regardless of the motives, Janne Klerk’s photographs are marked by crystalline purity. She has a
virtuoso eye and she cuts to the bone in her rendering of reality, while she never mixes her own
feelings into her pictures. Instead she allows reality to speak directly through her and passes it on to
us, matter-of-factly and unsentimentally. With this book she has created an ode to Denmark.
Lisbeth Bonde
March 2015
Lisbeth Bonde is an art critic and author based in Copenhagen.