A picturesque journey

A Picturesque Journey is a ‘road-movie’, showing the journey from Tornio in Northern Finland to the mountain Avasaksa on the arctic circle, where the French scientist Maupertuis in 1736 famously took his measurments to determine the degree of flattening of the Earth towards the poles (which was predicted by Newton). The journey, which took place on the day of the winter solstice culminates at noon in the same view from Avasaksa which is depicted in A. F. Skjöldebrand’s engraving from 1799, made on the first ‘touristic’ journey to the Nord-Cap on the longest day of the year, the summer solstice. Further development of the ideas around time and the seasons has led to another, related work Midday/Midnight (66° 33') which has been exhibited in the exhibition ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ at the ICA, London