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Krass Clement
Krass Clement is a Danish autodidact photographer. His internationally acclaimed work emerges from two traditions: Scandinavian melancholy and the ‘flaneur’ tradition from the Parisian school. Clement’s work is concerned with reflecting interior states of mind rather than with documenting real life situations.
His dark, stripped-back aesthetic combines with a stream of consciousness approach to evoke introspective, psychological landscapes that sit somewhere between fiction and reality. Clement works quickly, moving through spaces as a visitor and an observer, working as unobtrusively as possible. His work originates from a fertile and imaginative thought process, a stream of consciousness that is clearly evident in his later books.
In 1991, Krass Clement travelled to Ireland at the invitation of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, a trip which resulted in Clement’s best known publication DRUM. Shot in a single evening on just three and a half rolls of film, this seminal work has typified Clement’s work ever since. The work was also presented in the village of Drum, County Monaghan as part of a major Photo Museum Ireland (formerly Gallery of Photography) Public Art programme, supported by Monaghan County Council and Creative Ireland. Recent publications with RRB Books include: Impasse Hotel Syria; Belfast; Across the Cut; Dublin.
His work is held in the National Photography Collection at Photo Museum Ireland
Artist Projects
Untitled, from the series Drum: A place in Ireland, 1996
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Krass Clement, Untitled, from the series Drum: A place in Ireland, 1996
Krass Clement, Untitled, from the series Drum: A place in Ireland, 1996
Details: Archival pigment inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Baryta, 50x70cm (paper size), uneditioned print, produced 2021, acquired for the National Photography Collection 2022.
Krass Clement's Book
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Available at Gallery of Photography, Dublin - in store and online at photobooks.site
Drum by Krass Clement
Photographed in a small pub in Drum, Ireland, on a single evening and with only a few rolls of film (and a rumored “five pints of Guinness”), Krass Clement (born 1946) created one of the most important contributions to the contemporary Danish photobook. His 1996 Drum opens in a darkening and foggy town, with a workday ending and some men heading off for a drink. Through subtle shifts in focus and a masterful filmic sequencing, the book comes to concentrate on one principal character in the shadowy pub: a hunched, weather-beaten old man sitting alone with his drink.
Drum is a quiet, dusky meditation on community, the outsider, alienation and the terrors of being alone. A virtually unobtainable and therefore highly sought-after photobook, Clement’s masterwork is here reproduced in full, accompanied with an essay by photo historian Rune Gade.
Errata Editions’ Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books. Each volume in the series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or expensive for most to experience.
Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study of the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each volume in the series contains illustrations of every page in the original photobook, a new essay by an established writer on photography, production notes about the creation of the original edition and biographical and bibliographical information about each artist.
Artists Exhibitions
Group Exhibition
PROGRAMME