Jens Lauridsen: Images made to last

By Signe Hansen | Photos: Jens Lauridsen

For photographer and visual artist Jens Lauridsen, an image is as much about material as motif. A lifelong photographer with a self-confessed nerdy fascination for platinum/palladium printing, he is drawn to the permanence of the physical print in an increasingly digital world. That fascination may now feed into a larger project he is seeking funding to realise an exhibition inspired by Martin A. Hansen’s 1950 novel Løgneren.

Photography has followed Jens Lauridsen for most of his life, but his approach carries traces of another discipline too. Originally trained as an actor in England, he still thinks in characters, staging and atmosphere, looking for the point where observation becomes interpretation. “For me, art comes from immersing yourself in something,” he says. “You investigate, you keep asking questions, and eventually you find something that catches you.”

That curiosity now has a physical home at Kunstnerfløjen at Anneberg Kulturpark in Odsherred, where Lauridsen is an active member. Alongside his work as a teacher and acting roles, he devotes his time to photography and cultural projects, including a voluntary role as chairman of the local literature festival.

Jens Lauridsen: Images made to last

Back to the image

Lauridsen’s relationship with photography began early. At 12, his father took him to buy his first SLR camera, and photography later became part of his performing-arts studies. Acting remained his main ambition for years, but around five to eight years ago, photography moved steadily to the foreground.

Part of that return involved going backwards technologically. Frustrated by shooting countless digital images and deciding afterwards which mattered, Lauridsen returned to analogue photography to retrain his eye. Around three years ago, he then discovered platinum/palladium printing.

“I was completely taken by the tactile quality and the tonality,” he explains. With nowhere nearby to learn the process, he taught himself, building a darkroom and UV exposure unit, testing printers and sourcing chemicals from Italy. “It’s insanely expensive, which is probably why it is only nerds like me who work with it,” he says with a small self-deprecating laugh.

Photographer Jens Lauridsen is fascinated by the process and permanence of platinum/ palladium printing. Photo: Frederikke Vard

Characters, not subjects

The theatrical background remains visible in Lauridsen’s motifs. Animals feature frequently, but he does not see himself as a nature photographer. Instead, he looks for character: a gaze, posture or moment that seems almost human.

“When I photograph an animal, I’m trying to see what kind of character is sitting there,” he says. A silverback gorilla in Berlin, for instance, fascinated him through its calm, observant presence. “Sometimes I sit there thinking: am I actually the one in the zoo, while he is outside looking at me?”

That search for character could also shape a larger exhibition Lauridsen hopes to realise in 2027, inspired by Martin A. Hansen’s Løgneren. Written in Odsherred, the novel has a particular local connection for Lauridsen, who plans to use Nekselø as the real-life setting for his photographs. Rather than illustrating the story itself, he wants to explore its themes of truth, deception and desire, combining the images with typewritten texts and an analogue soundscape. “I don’t want to recreate the book,” he says. “I want to go out and photograph the themes.”

The project is still dependent on funding, but the ambition is to launch it in connection with the local literature festival in 2027.

Jens Lauridsen: Images made to last

Made to outlast us

While Lauridsen exhibits and sells his work, commerce is not what drives it. “For me, selling is not important,” he says. “What interests me is being able to immerse myself in something and investigate it.”

Platinum/palladium printing suits that mindset through both its craft and its permanence. The image penetrates the fibres of the paper rather than sitting simply on its surface, giving the print a longevity that Lauridsen finds increasingly meaningful in a world where personal histories sit on phones, servers and in the cloud.

“We’ve digitalised everything, and all our pictures are in the cloud. What happens if one day it all closes down?” he asks. “With platinum/palladium, the photograph can exist for as long as the paper exists.”

For Lauridsen, that contrast gives the painstaking process another layer of meaning. Each print is an artwork, but also a physical record intended to remain – a deliberately slow response to a culture in which images can appear and disappear in seconds.

Jens Lauridsen: Images made to last