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An interview with Christoffer Rudquist.

Written by Joanne Birkitt, Comte de Grasse CMO | September 6th 2018

on September 6th 2018

1. How would you describe your photographic style?
A mixed form of documentary and architecture, with an element of humanity. I’m sure there is an academic term, but I wouldn’t be the best to ask for it.
2. What inspires you in life?
The mundane parts that make life so extraordinary to wake up to every day. The unvarnished raw Happiness, Sorrow, Yearning, Desires, loss, responsibilities, achievements, hunger, love, beauty.
3. How did you become a photographer?
There are days now where I wonder how it happened. I got a camera from my father at the tender age of 11. I used this as the opportunity to remodel my parent’s sauna into a dark room. This room became my second hide out. Not only for processing images, but it was good because a darkroom is one of those places that should always be closed no questions asked.
It was first after traveling for about a year in Asia that I seriously thought it was something I was about to get ready to do. I was also very interested in Cultural anthropology, so after a year at the university, I decided to go full steam into photography. At the time I had no idea how to go about it, and restless as I am, I wanted to do everything at once. So, I took my savings and put together a project photographing the Guerilla fighting the Burmese military government, this was in 2000. When I came back I had been accepted to International centre of photography in NY, so I went there, only to realize that conflict photography and documentary photography as the medium stands today, probably wasn’t for me. So I started making landscapes.
4. What is your favourite cocktail?
Oh that’ll be Sicilian peach Bellini for summer, and an Old Fashioned for Winter.
5. What would you wear drinking a 44°N Gin & Tonic?
A Sinatra porkpie panama, double breasted linen suit, calf leather Barkers, yellow acetate frames with blue lens. Think John Malkovich in ‘The sheltering sky’.
6. What excited you about the Comte de Grasse project?
Everything! The audaciousness, inventiveness, freshness, coolness, technicality, seductiveness.
7. What is the next part of the CDG project that you really want to capture in image?
Seeing how the first parts have been about development and heritage now it’s all about the bottle, the content and the nature. I want to know who the people are drinking it, what will they look like in photos. Where would they drink it?