Lille Istanbul
Andreas Meinich

As something is photographed it goes from being an object, a place, a person, and becomes an extended version of itself, a motif. As Andreas Meinich’s photographs are digitally woven using a jacquard technique, the motifs become further removed from their origin, and this translation from photograph to tapestry in a sense reverses the act of documentation that occurred at the click of the camera, and makes the imagery less reliable, more fantastical, more up to belief.

Walking into a room filled with Meinich’s tapestries seemingly floating in midair, creates a feeling of entering a dream world, the room itself the bed as we get under the covers and experience other realms of possibility, a place of childlike innocence and wonder.

This feeling is strengthened by the fact that the objects and formations we stumble upon within Meinich’s photographs have, almost without exception, an element of folklore to it. In this constellation of tapestries, we can feel the comfort of a story told to us, as we meet tiny creatures and miniature towns, secret places only accessed by a magic carpet, a portal in a closet, or in Meinich’s case - a bike.

We meet The Old Man from Nip (Nipgubben), a legend in the Swedish mountains, a tiny old man tasked with protecting the mountains from human harm. Physically his statue stands stock still, but legend has it he patrols the mountains far and wide looking for wrongdoers to punish. His statue stands at Nip Mountain as a reminder for visitors to tread with caution and compassion, or else… The threats might be vague, but insistent indeed. What man needs to behave is another, tinier, man telling him what to do, so it seems.

Lore transcends both time and place, and The Old Man from Nip reaches further then his small eyes or Nip Mountain would indicate. About three hundred and fifty kilometers below him, stands the miniature village of Little Istanbul (Lilla Istanbul), made and protected by another old man and folk artist, Jan-Erik Svennberg, or as one could call him, The Old Man of Little Istanbul.

Svennberg built his little kingdom with his own hands, and has since been its keeper. Several wooden mosques stand not far from Svennberg’s home, surrounded by trees, their bar needles both poking and protecting the minaret, the dome, encapsulating the fairy tale like quality of these pieces of Turkish culture in Dalarna, Sweden.

I would like to believe these two men are kindred spirits, one keeper watching over the other. The Two Old Men, Nipgubben and Svennberg, and his Little Istanbul, are at the least woven together by this composition of tapestries, honored as keepers of nature and culture respectively, both protecting the corporeal world and the fantastical.

Text by Olivia McIntyre