“There is no beauty without pain,” says Danish photographer Astrid Kruse Jensen, whose images drift between reality and memory. Exploring contrasts of light and darkness, her work reflects deep personal loss. “Photography is a balance — where do you place the shadow, what do you burn out?” After losing her husband, she sought a new beginning — a place where life and art could resonate, where everything might come together again.

Ed Templeton, American artist and founder of Toy Machine, blends skateboarding, photography, and painting into raw reflections of youth culture. Influenced by Nan Goldin and Larry Clark, he began photographing his circle in 1994. Filmed in Copenhagen, Templeton captures strangers and skaters alike — revealing the highs and lows of the scene. “Skateboarders destroy their bodies inside and out,” he says. His work portrays both the thrill and emptiness that define their world.

“Photography is light — you approach chaos, frame it, and create calm,” says Danish photographer Henrik Saxgren. For him, a good photo sparks conversation and lets people see the familiar anew. After losing his wife, he turned to landscapes, shaping images like a painter. His camera is his way into the world: “To reach intimacy, you must offer intimacy. You don’t get more than you give.”

What does a graveyard say about life?

Danish artist Balder Olrik spent months photographing empty mausoleums in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. “I looked into one and saw silk flowers covered in spiderwebs. It hit me — we will be forgotten.”

Recovering from illness, Olrik found in this silent world a reflection on love, loss, and impermanence: “Maybe we should just do what we want in life. Our fear of not being eternal causes us more pain than death itself.”

We met Los Angeles-based photographer Catherine Opie in the Norwegian winter, capturing mountains in twilight. “It’s a mood, an emotion — the idea that a day begins and ends,” she says. Reflecting on the history of blue in art — from Picasso’s Blue Period to Derek Jarman’s film and Renaissance cerulean — Opie explores what this color holds, and why we’re drawn to its light at both dawn and dusk, moments of beginnings and endings.

We met great German photographer Thomas Struth for an in-depth conversation about his works, career and view on life. “You have to have a reason. That’s the starting point. It has to come from within. You cannot calculate art. I mean, you can. But then it will not survive.” Struth started as a painter and studied at the famous Düsseldorf Academy under Gerhard Richter.