Song of Songs chapter 2:
I am the rose of Saron. Lily of the valley.
As a lily among thorns is my friend among maidens.

Nørrebro’s red rose.

By Priest Erik Bastian Bock 2011.

Before the word was the song. The child’s cry when it thinks it has been abandoned by its mother is a song. The song of despair. The song of rage, which is a cry in the void for love and care. There is the lover’s song for the beloved when he longs. The song rises towards God, not in one movement outside, but from within your heart, which is closer than yourself. Here lives your longing. God’s Place: Your Me! This mysterious and boundless place, which you do not know and must not know: You must not make yourself the image of God! I am! I am! I am Life!

And you have to love your life as it is. You must love the world as it is. But the Son of Man rebelled: I have overcome the world! And he rebelled against God. When he said: I and the father are one, did he then not push his father from the throne? The prince of this world?

In a world that has relegated the old myths to religious history and put the old gods at the gate, your Self is the last secret and hidden thing left in your life. Manipulations, distortions and betrayal have not been able to put the human I in the grave: I live and you shall live!
During the years Liv Carlé lived in Nørrebro, she sat in Helligkors church every Sunday. For the priest, she was a reminder: Be true! Only halfway close and almost he live up to it. The moment of truth only occurred in the mystery. The Eucharist, which is the place of grace. Around the altar, sinners kneel and receive the bread of the Son of Man’s body and the wine of his blood. For God’s sake and mine. A rebellion against death. Also, in the old myths there was rebellion against death. Attis, Tammuz, Osiris and Orpheus also had to go to Hades. They too were resurrected. We hear the weeping at their burial and the laughter at their resurrection. With bated breath we listen: Can we hear? The crying and the laughter are so far, far away. We are missing the key that can open the door.

Fine Art PhotographyWhen Liv, with her rosary of barbed wire on her forehead, kneels at the altar, she helps to put time to rest. Her wounds and her devotion, which is too strong for this world, come into place here. An image she herself has sought out with the camera again and again. So softly, so carefully. Saint Augustine says that at the moment the bread touches the lips of the kneeling, the Son of Man kisses his sister and his bride. The expressed image of the soul. Augustine uses an image from the “Song of Songs” the Song of Songs, where the king speaks to the queen, Shulamith in a love language that occurs in the sacred moment when two lovers meet face to face. Perhaps this song is fragments of a wedding liturgy from Solomon’s Temple, but since then it has had its place in the canon, and interpreters have mirrored this glowing lyric in an allegorical light and evoked it as images of God the Lord’s love. Later, for the Christians, Jesus, who revealed God, became the king who speaks to the queen, his beloved soul.

I see Liv as a warrior with her photographic eye attacking a Barbie culture where the ovaries must be operated on and virginal beauty must be bestowed on those who simply go under the knife. The Barbie princess is going to be a bride! But isn’t Liv a Barbie punk herself? Liv, which has material in her for both a saint and a prophet, I see more than a symptom of our times. The strange dual being called man must contend with spirit and matter. Contradictions, such as where they are experienced with the tragic seriousness of Life, create what we call religion. Stretched out between two worlds. With her heart in the old world and her brain in the new, she walks on a bridge over a raging stream. Over a gaping abyss, she fights with herself. Fighting with his life. With the fear of death in her heart, she closes her eyes and trusts in the inner light: Faith!

My mother is a visual artist, she a photograph.

By son Harald 2007

Amazon
The grain was high in the field, in the gap at the end of the garden, the sun was shining, and the weather was nice, so me, little brother and mother went out into the field, in the tall straw, and mother said: It must be now before they harvest the grain, then we put ourselves out there. Mom had the camera on a tripod, and then we took pictures with the self-timer, and the straws tickled, and Esajas jumped around. Mom always says hold it, hold it, when she feels the picture is there, but it’s probably only something she can feel, because we can’t see in the camera when we take the picture.

Just as we finished taking the picture, there was a roar and then the biggest harvester I’ve ever seen just came rolling away, we were pretty lucky we finished the picture then, because otherwise that picture would never have been. For me, the amazon picture is a big memory of that summer 2007.

When mom said we should make an amazon picture, I thought she was going to go in and get a knife and cut off her breasts, so we can make the picture right. Sometimes it’s hard work when we do the big pictures, I have to stand in the same position for a long time, but that’s fine, because it pays off in the end to do it well. It’s a piece of deeply serious work that I take seriously, otherwise it won’t be right, and then probably no one will ever look at it.

We are Amazons in our family. Mother is naked in almost all the pictures, so we are Vikings after all. The amazons were female warriors, when their daughters turned about 14, they cut off their breasts so they became better archers, better at defending themselves, and we are the children of the amazons, we will also be great warriors one day, that’s why we are in the pictures, along for the hunt.
The Amazon is strong.