Ann Pettersson uses photography to mould a fictional reality. She deconstructs the conventional view of our surroundings and reveals a world unlike the one we generally regard as tangible. Her theme is the constantly changing cultivated nature in urban fringes. In colourful, shrouded landscapes, Pettersson reveals remote, virtually underground regions. She depicts a dreamlike landscape that reflects the ambiguity of the human psyche.

Pettersson’s interventions undermine the conventional interpretation of photography as a document of truth. In seamless collages, she builds, dismantles and manipulates the image. She restructures motifs as fragments and overviews in structures by increasing or reducing the defined landscape characteristics. The truthful nature of the photographic medium emphasizes the alienating quality of Pettersson’s work, while at the same time underscoring the ambivalence thus created.

The medial power of photography as a means of communication, depicts the here and now; the momentum seen by the individual, as if in a flash. At the same time, the multiple shots reflect the experience of a longer time span, as in a film. The image is the human framework in which the hushed presentation is showing.

The alternation of natural and cultural landscapes as subject matter, serves as a metaphor for the multifaceted and simultaneously unfathomable twists and turns of the human disposition. The transformation processes in the contemporary landscape represent both the lacunas and the impulses of the human spirit, incomplete and still forming. Pettersson transforms a deserted roadside or ditch into a surreal panorama in which fact and fiction are combined. In many capacities, she unfolds a hypothetical landscape, thus constantly reshaping the habitat of the human psyche.