Tekla Evelina Severin Finds the Lines in Color Overload and Bold Settings

Name:
Tekla Evelina Severin
Photography:
Tekla Evelina Severin
Words:
Caroline Meeusen

She is a color addict to say the least. Looking at Tekla Evelina Severin’s works–filled with bold, mesmerizing images of people, architecture, objects, and still life–gives away her fervor for remarkable shapes and color combinations. Schooled in interior architecture and furniture design, she now intersperses between photography, art direction, trend forecasting, interior architecture, and set design, leading this marvelous artist to have been recently listed by Dezeen as one of the top ten architectural photographers to follow in the world. During our talk, Tekla took us on her journey to photography and her quest for color.

VISUAL PLEASURE Magazine: How did you roll into the world of photography and design?

Tekla Evelina Severin: I´ve moved from being an interior architect to becoming a designer in some kind of expanded multidisciplinary field between set design, creative direction, and color design. Instagram and social media made that career shift possible. I wouldn’t be taking the photos I do if I weren’t used to working as an interior architect or to drawing angles and perspectives in different 2D and 3D programs. However, strange as it may seem, I actually feel closer to architecture as a photographer than as an interior architect, since I can choose to shoot a particular angle or detail to highlight what I feel to be the essence of the architecture. But architecture isn’t photography, and photography isn’t architecture. I have the biggest respect for the complexity of designing spaces. I know how difficult it is to create a good ‘wholeness,’ while also always working with compromises.

Did you always know you would become a photographer/designer?

Not at all. I come from a working-class background where you couldn’t dream to study or to do something academic, let alone make a job from your ‘hobbies.’ But after slowly starting my journey from my hometown to Stockholm, a whole other world, I started to see it was possible.

Your Instagram account and website burst of color, why this choice for bold colors and patterns? What draws you to it?

I think my obsession with color has many different reasons like location. If I had lived in sunny LA or Spain, I probably wouldn´t had been so obsessed about vibrant colors and light the way I am from living in a country that becomes dark and gray half the year. And also, my background, working many years as an interior architect made me bored of the Scandinavian taste in general with all the gray and whites and no humor. But on a deeper level too, I think it’s about distinguishing and clarifying things and objects. In the same way you use colors to distinguish different subway lines, or how warning signs are yellow or red. I think the reason is probably psychological: being a controlling person, I also like to control and clarify my surroundings. But maybe it’s also physiological, because my eyesight is so bad. Maybe that is also the reason why it’s so important to me to capture things at all: the preciousness of being able to see.

What drives you and your work?

To say my point. Since I´m not a big talker, I say it visually. And of course, beauty drives me, if not to save the world then at least to change it.

Which architects or designers are your biggest influence?

Too many! The Bauhaus School movement–which turns 100 this year–Deconstructivists like Ricardo Bofill, Ricardo Legoretta, Jaime Hayon, and Margrethe Odgaard.

How do you manage to portray ordinary objects and buildings so extraordinarily and mesmerizing?

My aim is to both abstract and clarify a scene or an object at the same time, usually by clarifying something, most of the time a detail or crop so much so it becomes abstract and hyperreal.

Which do you like the most: capturing people in your photos or objects and buildings and why?

I like to capture myself in different surroundings. But it all depends on the scene. In the same way as an architect, I think the scale is crucial and I love to add people who tell something about the scale of the scene. Again, it all depends on which kind of scene or architecture. Sometimes you ‘ruin’ the graphics or seduction by adding people. I´m sorry, that sounds like a very elitist, non-human thing to say but as a photographer, I actually think it’s the truth sometimes.

Can you tell us what you are working on right now?

I´m actually working with a secret startup which will launch next year and I can promise it will be colorful. I’m also going to Germany to shoot Bauhaus architecture that will result in a traveling photo exhibition in the Nordic countries in November/December. Another thing that I’m part of is a book project about female explorers and photographers via Bell Collective, that will come out this autumn.