OCA News: Mathias Bruun Pederson

Really sad news, everyone: photography student Mathias Pederson passed away in July. Mathias had just turned 60 and had battled illness for long periods of his adult life. This, however, did little to obstruct his desire to live a rich, meaningful life and to make a difference, not least to his wife and two children. He was a leader for most of his professional life, and seeing and listening to people was central to how he approached his work.

Those of you in the OCA community who knew Mathias will have seen up close how his contributions to group activities were always measured, thoughtful and full of insight, warmth and good humour. As a student and photographer, his progress was, to put it mildly, rapid, characterised by a quiet determination and total commitment to realising his ideas – of which there were many.

After initially signing up for two OCA short courses, Mathias committed to the Photography degree programme and immediately showed himself to be an artist worth watching. After expressing some concern that he was ‘struggling a bit to break free from the conventional rules of composition’ and often spending ‘too much energy on centring, right angles, the golden ratio etc,’ Mathias had a quiet revelation: that these were not habits to break free from but ways of looking that were central to the art he made. Although he spoke excitedly and passionately about his interests and the things that became his subject matter, Mathias was always mindful of maintaining an understated way of looking that was very much in keeping with the quietly revolutionary spirit of the New Topographics school of landscape photographers.

This was never more evident than in his ninth assignment on Approaching Photography, for which Mathias ‘decided to take a road trip along the border between Denmark and Germany and document all 17 official border crossings connecting the two countries.’ This bold and hugely ambitious undertaking was all the more astonishing for the fact that Mathias not only saw the project through but completed the necessary journeys in a single day. The work he produced, a sample of which you can see below, was not interested in adding to the pile of images that present borders as wild and dramatic sites of tension, conflict and confrontation. Instead, Mathias turned down the volume and produced a piece of work that emphasised the unassuming, nondescript everydayness of architectures and spaces of authority. They are also photographs that carry Mathias’ wry sense of humour, standing as gently surreal and absurdist documents of a political system that is struggling to cope. But given the intensity of the dialogue that accompanies the policing of national borders, his quiet way of looking belied someone who was furious at the unkindness (too) often shown to those who are left with no choice but to uproot their families and lives and risk everything in the hope of a better world elsewhere. 

With characteristic wry self-deprecation, Mathias noted in the concluding statement of his final assignment: 

My confidence in photography has grown considerably over the past six months, and I am no longer particularly concerned about what laymen think of my work. This is a significant development for my future work. (And I can promise that photos of nine garage doors or 17 border crossings will not, as rule, elicit cheers of delight when shown to friends and acquaintances.)