G.B.M.: I remember seeing a series of drawings in your studio Basel, which I imagine go back to an earlier stage before you started working with photography. What kind of relationship did you have with other artistic disciplines such as painting?

I.H.: I always knew it wouldn’t be my means of expression, but still I think that it was important to learn to work with painting as well.

Most of the paintings I did were abstract works, using colour and geometric textures, but the more skilled I became technically the more conscious I became of the ease with which I produced these works and also the more I realized their superficiality. I felt the need to put myself on the line.

I also remember that during the time I was painting and drawing, when people asked me to show my works, I was unwilling to do so because I wasn’t sure of the result. Since starting to work with photography I have felt that my works fully correspond to my expressivity.

G.B.M.: And with sculpture you were engaging in a more challenging manual activity?

I.H.: When I started working as an artist my interest in the third dimension came out in the use of clay.

After clay I went on to make a series of works in stone, with all that that entailed in the studio: hoists to move boulders, sculpting tools etc., etc. After producing a small group of successful works I felt the need to move on to concrete and then later I worked in wood and made several works in bronze.

In the early 2000s I was still searching for a language. I worked with painting for some two years, but then I dropped everything and started to make site-specific installations. Since 2002 I have pursued my interest in photography and drawing.

My training as a sculptress is still very important to me: now when I embroider my photographs I apply the same procedure as when I sculpted. The different practices of making sculpture overlap and come together in the use of photography with the additional intervention of sewing.

G.B.M.: When and how did you feel the need to use photography?

I.H.: When I was eighteen I took photos but without any creative intent, so I stopped. I eventually discovered an interest in photography while I was attending art school, where it was one of the subjects we had to study.

G.B.M.: How did you realize that you had found your language in re-working photographs? Did the sewing come immediately or later?

I.H.: I worked on pure photography for about two years, and my concern then was with the relationship between reality and illusion. The transition between the real image and the image on the negative was still not satisfactory: sometimes it was too real, others too much of an illusion. At first I photographed and printed in black and white, but then I decided to try photographing in colour while printing in black and white to see what would happen if all the information contained in the colour were lost. In my studio I also kept a sewing machine I used for making my clothes. One day I printed a series of photographs I was really dissatisfied with, and as a way of taking out my anger on these pictures I started to put them through the sewing machine to destroy them; it was a spontaneous act of sewing across the photograph, just like scribbling with a marker pen.

I didn’t throw these pictures away immediately, but only after a few weeks, and during that time I began to reflect on the relationship between the material – the thread and the colour of the thread – and the photographic image in black and white. This gave me a glimpse of a new way of intervening on the image, of changing its meaning more directly. So I went through various attempts until I found the procedure I was looking for.

G.B.M.: In ​​your artistic research you have also made site-specific installations using thread as an element that defines space and volume. Does this way of defining space relate to the three-dimensionality of sculpture and / or architecture?

I.H.: Thread is not only the means that constructs the sculpture or that defines a space; it also creates an environment of interaction with the observer, who becomes an integral part of the installation itself, able to enter it not just physically but also imaginatively. I’m not just interested in creating a space with these physical threads, but also in the observer’s interaction with this illusory reality. Installations defined in this way are closely linked to the places where they are made: it is a process that takes a long time especially if you want to observe the context and understand how to intervene in that space.

G.B.M.: The flexibility of thread was already something a crucial element in your installations. Do you think there is a connection with the use you make of it in your photographs?

I.H.: No, I haven’t made a connection between the two uses.

G.B.M.: But in both cases, the thread is what you use to create the illusion.

I.H.: There is no univocal relationship between thread and my work. In the installations, the presence of the thread in space is crucial – it is like using a pencil to draw a mark on paper – and when I use the sewing machine to put thread on the photographs it is as if I were writing little coloured signs. While the pencil leaves a trace, the sewing machine moves over the surface and creates a weft on the warp of the photograph, and the result is an autonomous material. The material nature of the thread is important, but also its interaction with the image; with the holes in the paper I destroy the information contained in the photograph, but I add other information through the colour of the thread.

G.B.M.: Do you adopt a systematic approach when working with photography?

I.H.: The centre of my work is the photographs. Most of them depict landscapes. I photograph with analogue technology on a colour negative, enlarge the negative on black-and-white photographic paper, and then use the sewing machine to work on the images using stitching and coloured thread.

G.B.M.: By this method of preparing the images you set up a relationship between the vision of reality that you get with analogue photography and the manual act of stitching, which is completely unrelated to photography. In all this, however, is your goal to get the observer to believe in your image as an iconographic transposition of the real that corresponds to reality?

I.H.: I am interested in the contrast with space, the perception and exploration of the boundaries between reality and illusion.

Using the technique I have just described, I introduce into the black-and-white image coloured structures on the surface which complement the landscape. Optical perception fills the area of the image almost synthetically.

From a distance, the beholder has the impression of being in the presence of a realistic photo of a landscape. You only realize it is an artefact when you looks closely.

G.B.M.: The relationship between reality and reproduction is fundamental to your reflections on the photographic medium.

I.H.: Analogue photography also gives me the means to reflect on reality: the non-correspondence between reality and the reproduction of reality, the fact that when I reproduce something I deny reality itself and somehow I lose it. The distance of photography from reproduced reality is for me a constant cause for reflection.

G.B.M.: The “death of reality” is a central theme in philosophic thought, from Nietzsche right up to the latest interpretations of contemporary philosophy.

I.H.: Right now I am studying the writings of Vilem Flusser and Paul Virilio. I am fascinated by the theories of Jean Baudrillard and his analysis of the death of reality and its replacement by hyper-reality. In this space of sublimation between the real and the imaginary, between true and false, the distinction between subject and object comes to be erased and the distinction between past, present and future disappears.

For this reason it is essential for my work that I use analogue photography: if it were replaced by a digital image, I would also lose the reflection on reality that is at the basis of my work.

G.B.M.: What type of equipment do you use for taking your photos?

I.H.: The camera I use is a simple SLR and normally I use the automatic function. First, I identify the place I want to photograph and then I plan my approach. This involves looking through the viewfinder to get shots of the landscape. I take immediate pictures without any special technical experimentation, using only the camera’s automatic programme.

G.B.M.: Why do you choose landscapes where there are no signs of civilization, hardly any vegetation and which are totally void of human presence?

I.H.: My principal aim is to work on what the observer will see; it is a matter of perception. There should be no motifs in the image that interfere with its neutrality. If there are too many signs of civilization there is no longer the “pure” perception we may have of nature, and most importantly I do not want to tell a story. I want the observer to have the impression of being in a place with no recognizable identity.

It is a difficult concept to explain. There is a word in German, Heimat, which means “the place I come from,” or “where my heart belongs”. I want the observer to look at the picture and to find a place that belongs to them, where they feel freer, a neutral place where everyone can feel a sense of belonging.

My main aim is not to create a Heimat, but many observers look at my work and find this feeling of belonging, a place where they are in perfect control of the dialectic between cognition and recognition.

Undoubtedly, the concept of Heimat is closely linked to the loss of reality through the passage of time. But this is a feeling that belongs to the observer. In my role as an artist, I have no feeling of nostalgia, but I reflect on the concepts of memory, forgetfulness, loss, reality, illusion, time, transience, death and dying.

G.B.M.: When you’re behind the camera, what aspects do you want to emphasize most, also considering the use you will make of that particular image later in your studio?

I.H.: When I photograph, I often use an automatic programme suggested by the camera. It is not the “perfect shot” from a technical point of view – photographically speaking – that interests me, but I try to be as neutral as possible in the first shot and not to interpret the subject too much. Later, when I re-work the negative my training as an artist takes over and my choices become decisive.

G.B.M.: So there’s a kind of exchange of roles between you and the camera so as to capture an aseptic view of the landscape?

I.H.: Yes, I let the image be random, without any intervention in the form of cuts or special angles. It’s just the automatic recording of reality.

G.B.M.: I imagine you bring in this way of proceding also during the printing phase.

I.H.: To “strip” the image further I print the coloured negative in black and white. In this way I get a timelessness, a “non-season”, and at the same time the photographic image approaches drawing. This transformation allows me to get away from the image.

G.B.M.: Even the weather plays a role in this process ….

I.H.: Experience has shown me that the time interval is important for my work. I never work on photographs I have just printed. I always let time pass – months, usually – between when I photograph, when I print and when I intervene through sewing.

In this way, I move away from my personal involvement with the pictures, I delete the memory. I need to look at them as if they had been taken by someone else. When I decide how to intervene through colour, I look with new eyes; it is the image itself that suggests where and how to intervene, and when to stop. I am looking for the most universal result possible, so I place myself before pictures of landscapes taken from catalogues, magazines, postcards and paintings. All these images have points in common, characteristic features that I transfer into my works as if they had a common denominator, almost like a stereotype of the “mountain landscape”.

G.B.M.: Could you summarize in a few words the processes you go through when you create your works?

I.H.: Put briefly, there are four steps:

1: Taking the photographs, which means delegating the representation to the camera, whose eye becomes revelatory in the act of shooting the subject. In this way, there is less awareness of the subject in the act of photographing, whereas if you draw an object you have an awareness of what you are drawing.

2: The second step is the enlargement that somehow transforms the image into a surface ready for the next intervention.

3: The sewing gives shape to a new, reconstructed reality.

4: The frame must then invite the beholder to look inside, so it becomes a window through which to observe.

These steps are different processes that interact with each other.

G.B.M.: The two aspects –  destruction and then construction – are united at the same time. The natural and the artificial coexist. What reaction does this illusory dimension provoke in the beholder?

I.H.: It is important that the observer should become aware of the illusion only when looking closely at the stitching.

Though I work only with colours and abstract textures, the illusion felt by observers is immediate and their interpretation depends on their experience. If they have a memory of mountain landscapes with a certain type of coloured flower, they will recognize “its flowers” in the abstract texture, like rhododendrons or other varieties, and their memory will say “those are rhododendrons.” However, if they have no memory of this type of landscape, my work on the photos remains abstract.

G.B.M.: How important is the choice of colour?

I.H.: Colour has its own importance. I have found that in the emotional interpretation that each person makes of my works, colour is more decisive and crucial than the shape of the landscape image in black and white. So, for example, the photos I took during my stay in the Sonora Desert in Arizona, which were printed only as details of a wider overview and then re-worked by introducing areas of green thread, were recognized as landscapes from Switzerland.

G.B.M.: Is this a way of identifying oneself with the work?

I.H.: When people buy one of my works, they choose a landscape that corresponds to their own context and their own world.

For example, one person was convinced that a certain work represented a landscape in Iceland, while another was sure that the landscape was in Sweden. Another wanted a small work in which she thought she recognized the path she had walked along with her husband on several occasions.

But none of these photos were taken in Sweden or Iceland or on that path.

For these reasons, I never give geographical references in the titles of my works, just the archive number.

G.B.M.: Why is landscape so important to you?

I.H.: Reflections on landscape and its representation have been the subject of many questions I have asked myself. I grew up in the mountains and while I lived there, I experienced a deep bond with the environment and its deep-rooted traditions. When tourism was in its infancy the mountain was a source of unspoiled landscapes to contemplate in silence. In recent years, there has been a transformation of the mountain landscape from a place of contemplation to a cradle of consumerism, a container for the experience of extreme adventures or the promise of relaxation in luxurious health resorts.

G.B.M.: What does it mean to “look at” a landscape?

I.H.: Looking out of a window and seeing the vastness of the fields, standing on a hill and looking at mountains and lakes or watching the ocean from the top of a tower seems more obvious than it is.

G.B.M.: Do you mean that it is not only a matter of visual perception?

I.H.: Gazing at a panorama is like looking at the infinite outside oneself. The view depends on distance, width and depth. Without distance the scene fades away. Distance both separates and reveals the view at the same time.

Being able to look at a view is also the result of the mental mechanism of recognizing the various individual parts and being able to make them into one. The combination of distance and synthesis leads to the visual experience and to the perception of space, which makes this a fundamental experience.

 

G.B.M.: This involves a thorough knowledge of what you are looking at, specific knowledge of a territory not only geographically but also historically.

I.H.: To be able to interpret what you see, you must already have knowledge. For this type of knowledge, every culture and every age have developed their own code of understanding and perception. This knowledge is imagination and memory and leads to several possible interpretations. Each alteration and enhancement of perception is related to this pre-knowledge and cannot fade.

G.B.M.: So perception is closely linked to our personal experience as observers?

I.H.: Perception of landscape implies a constant change of definition; it depends both on the context of the particular moment and on our prior knowledge of other landscapes, that is, what is observed or captured in the moment or leads back to other visions or memories due to other visual experiences.

Distance (which was necessary to be able to grasp the landscape) was conceived as a relationship that was lost or believed to be lost in culture and is expressed as nostalgia.

G.B.M.: The relationship between man and nature has also changed, hasn’t it?

I.H.: Man’s relationship with nature always used to be experienced as a “whole”, whereas now it has changed into a relationship of opposition or mere coexistence.

Pollution has tarnished the idyllic image of nature. The continuous evolution from virgin landscapes to cultivated landscapes, to industrial areas, to urban sites and then also the creation of parks and nature reserves, has made the terms natural panorama and cultural panorama redundant in Europe. Primitive landscapes are now almost impossible to find, and even high altitude alpine terrain is barely able to resist human intervention.

In Switzerland, for example, every minute 1 square meter of land disappears to make way for construction. Fields are over-fertilized and vegetation loses much of its biodiversity. Many beekeepers prefer the city (in Basel there are already 70 active bee farms), where flowering goes on for longer and is on a larger scale.

At the same time we are witnessing the advance of globalization.

The competitor we face is no longer the nearby village; the most advantageous offers come from overseas. Traditions are sought and newly accepted. The people and the reception of the (Alpine) landscape are in an area of conflict between loss and nostalgia, between yesterday, today and tomorrow.

G.B.M.: In ​​the history of painting, the importance of landscape in its iconographic representation has varied greatly and in the modern age it has often become the central subject. How do you see its representation in the contemporary imagination?

I.H.: The continuous presence of the media and the constant bombardment with images of panoramas have reduced landscapes to advertising backgrounds designed to illustrate situations and needs –  needs that still need to be created. In advertising, panoramas and nature are synonymous with freedom, relaxation, movement, health, living spaces and much more.

G.B.M.: Is this the proposal of a virtual reality that often does not correspond to objective reality but attempts to give us a model with which to identify?

I.H.: We have not really seen what we think we know through thousands of images. The constant growth of the media, our individual and social experiences and the resulting development of identity are related to a loss of identity, which often results in loss of culture and brings about or presumably brings about the loss of our own nature and the essence of nature.

G.B.M.: Perhaps we are losing the perception of what is real around us?

I.H.: Perception in the virtual age contains only the distance that can be called loss of reality. What we have recently acquired through experience is what we are now losing. Illusion takes over.