Ebbe Stub Wittrup made his first artistic mark in 2001, with his snapshot-like pictures in the renowned book Places To Go - People To See (Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin). Ebbe Stub Wittrup is a graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. As early on as the 1990s he exhibited the video projection “Crossings” at Wien Kunsthalle as well as at the National Gallery in Prague.

Since the year 2000, Ebbe Stub Wittrup has been increasingly working towards a more conceptual visual sensibility. He seems to thrive in pursuing this direction. However, in his more monumental pieces of work, he has kept some of the distracting aesthetics of the snapshot. The motifs are not perfectly composed (when are they?) but rather products of coincidence, rummaging and sensibility. This approach makes Ebbe Stub Wittrup a formidable heir to the best of photographers and artists in Denmark.

In recent years, Ebbe Stub Wittrup has made an impressive oeuvre. First and foremost with Night Sky (2003-2004), a series in which the blue and green luster of the night sky is cut asunder by the beaming lights of airplanes. These markings might be seen as “random” but yet they create a pattern of almost lyrical dimensions.

When this series began to attract very widespread attention, Ebbe Stub Wittrup unexpectedly turned to flash-lit black-and-white photographs of mushrooms lurking in the dark forest, printed as offset on newspaper. In doing this, Ebbe Stub Wittrup challenged his own curiosity as well as the expectations of others. However, Dark Places - White Mushrooms (2005) proved to be a new major achievement in his intriguing and ongoing artistic journey.

All nuances of his various endeavors came together in his book Meanwhile Now (2007).

Since then, Ebbe Stub Wittrup has begun digitalizing his work, showing even more conceptual consequence. This might seem a quantum leap, but there is a certain logic to it. In his most recent work, the landscapes are hardly recognizable monochromatic surfaces. But still, Ebbe Stub Wittrup obviously knows exactly how to bring this mental abstraction to life.

 — Essay by Lars Schwander,
Director of Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen, Denmark

Ebbe Stub Wittrup was one of three photographers chosen to represent Denmark this year at the nightlong projection of photographs from 27 European countries at the Rencontres Festival in Arles. Lars Schwander served as curator for the selections from Denmark.