The Adventures of Charles The Bear
The Adventures of Charles the Bear is an ongoing book-project, set to be published in 2011. The idea for this project came to me in Hong Kong, when I saw a lady pushing a shopping cart in the middle of the road. Against traffic. My affection for documenting humorous scenarios such as that one, made me photograph the incident, without thinking much of it. After having developed the pictures, I asked myself: "Why do I not have a stronger reaction to that lady? She's doing something most people would find fairly disturbing. I just think she's funny. Slightly odd, at most." My conclusion was that the anonymity that big cities offer, also gives people more space to live out their eccentricities. In other words, you can do whatever you want, because nobody knows you. Thus, by introducing a naive, outside character to an urban environment, my goal is to emphasize, through his impressions, how bizarre everyday life can be in a big city, and what people actually put themselves through, just to be able to say: "Where I live, stores are open 24/7".
