ORGAN | Norman Wilcox-Geissen & Maja Larsson
PHOTOGRAPHER NORMAN WILCOX-GEISSEN AND GRAPHIC DESIGNER MAJA LARSSON LIVE TOGETHER AS A COUPLE, AND IN ADDITION TO THEIR INDIVIDUAL PRACTICES THEY ALSO FORM ORGAN, A CREATIVE STUDIO FOCUSING ON PHOTOGRAPHY, DESIGN, AND CREATIVE DIRECTION.
Maja is an art director and graphic designer. Her work is centered around the tactility and details of printed matter, embodying a conceptual approach to editorial design, publishing, and visual identity for the fields of art, culture, and fashion. Norman’s photographs are often surreal and synesthetic, and evoke both old and new visual cadences. His work is tonally rich, formally surprising, and always very, very beautiful. This sensibility modulates harmoniously in his work with Maja for ORGAN, and their creative collaboration continues to transform and expand their process and aesthetic across an ever-widening range of materials, media, and applications.
Since 2016 Norman and Maja have lived and worked from a studio space in Hackney, London, and so they were able to collaborate on this series for TSUKI—titled “Holes”—and answer a few questions we had about their joint process and practice.
HOW DO YOU CREATE AT HOME?
HOW HAS THIS BEEN DIFFERENT FROM YOUR REGULAR PROCESS?
We mostly work from our studio here, so this hasn’t actually changed that much for us. We do a lot of collaborations, so not being able to have meetings at the moment feels sad. We’re really starting to miss the face to face contact within the creative process. Before the lockdown we finished a project with furniture designer Lukas Gschwandtner—the opening of his show at Lant Street here in London was the last time we attended a social event and it already feels like a long time ago.
Fortunately, we have most things that we need at hand to make our work—our books, references, tools, materials, and equipment—or otherwise we’re finding resourceful ways around problems.
HAS THIS SITUATION ENCOURAGED OR EVEN DEMANDED
YOU TO TRY SOMETHING NEW?
As we have more time at hand, we are able work in a more spontaneous fashion and try to implement new techniques and practices. We just brought out our foil-blocking machine that we got a few years back which we look forward to trying out. We also hope to have time to revisit old projects and print up old photos in our darkroom, learn new skills, and organize and archive old work. We also did a massive clear-out of the studio, and cleaned our windows and repotted our plants, which frees up a lot of headspace.
“FOR THIS PROJECT WE HAVE QUITE ENJOYED THE LIMITATIONS, WORKING FROM OUR IMMEDIATE REALITY WITH THE OBJECTS THAT SURROUND US AND OUR TOOLS AT HAND.”
WHAT ARE SOME CHANGES IN YOUR PROCESS, APPROACH, OR OUTCOME?
For this project we have quite enjoyed the limitations, working from our immediate reality with the objects that surround us and our tools at hand. We wanted to achieve a poetic reinterpretation of the familiar and mundane objects that make up our everyday environment. We used a stack of very old and out-of-date Polaroid, which was temperamental but added an element of unknowing to the outcome. We incorporated graphic treatments to create patterns and holes within the images—a reflection of our feelings at this time.
HOW HAVE CHANGES TO YOUR LIFE CHANGED YOUR WORK?
We are still in a process of adjustment to a potentially new normal. We feel it’s still early days but we’re starting to think about new ways of navigating and working in what might be very different scenarios, as well as how the wider industry will adapt to these changes.
IS THERE ANYTHING POSITIVE—OR NEGATIVE—YOU CAN SEE COMING
OUT OF THIS SITUATION FOR YOUR WORK?
We both feel that the extra time that has been given to us is in some ways very valuable. It creates more breathing space and time for reflection on our work/life balance—an essential readjustment alongside a broader sense of collective empathy and solidarity.