Sunset Reflection by Alantherock: The Only Thing Standing

Sunset Reflection by Alantherock is a photography print of flat, still water under a sunset sky in Denmark, made from an old photograph by Alan Pedersen. Almost everything in it lies down. The sky lies in bands, the far shore is one thin dark line, and the water stretches out without a wave. Then, far over to the right, one small dark shape stands up out of it.

Sunset Reflection is a photo print by the Copenhagen artist Alan Pedersen, who works as Alantherock. It is based on an old photograph taken in Denmark: calm water at sunset, under a sky running from lavender to deep orange. NOKUKO prints it on Matt Enhanced paper (230 g) in two sizes.

A Photograph Built From Horizontal Bands

Sunset Reflection is made almost entirely of horizontal lines. Read it from the top and the sky moves through lavender, pink, peach and gold before it burns to orange just above the land. None of those colours has an edge. Each one simply becomes the next.

The far shore sits six tenths of the way down the picture, a dark strip so thin it reads as a ruled line, running the full width without a single tree or roof breaking it. Below it the water takes up the warm end of the sky, orange near the shore and paler gold towards the bottom edge. Close to the foreground the surface is scattered with small dark flecks, the only texture in the whole picture, and a hint of how shallow and how still the water is.

The One Thing Standing Up

The only vertical in Sunset Reflection is a single small dark upright, standing in the water just below the shore, about a sixth of the way in from the right edge. It is tiny. Its own short reflection hangs beneath it. The photograph does not say what it is, and it does not need to.

What it does is give the picture a scale. Without it, the water could be a puddle or an ocean. With it, there is a distance between you and that far shore, and the stillness has a size. It also gives the eye somewhere to stand. Cover it with a fingertip and the print turns into a field of colour. Take the finger away and it is a place again.

Alan uses the same device on land in Path of Autumn Trees by Alantherock, where a long avenue of trunks ends in one small building at its very centre. There the small thing sits at the end of a road. Here there is no road at all, only open water, and the mark stands off to one side as if it had wandered there.

A Warm Print for a Quiet Wall

Sunset Reflection brings a lot of colour with very little going on. There are no figures, no detail to read and no busy corners, so it can hang where you want warmth without asking for attention: a hallway, a bedroom, the wall above a desk. The format is portrait, which suits narrow walls and stairwells as well as open ones.

It also sits easily beside other photographs. The broad bands of colour give a gallery wall a calm anchor, as the dining room view of the print shows next to two other Alantherock photographs.

A sunset is a picture of change. The light is going, and in a few minutes this whole sky will be a different colour. Yet the one thing in the photograph that could move is standing perfectly still, and that is where the calm comes from.

The description that travels with the print says light and time seem to pause here. Look at the small upright on the right, and you will see where the pause is kept.

About Sunset Reflection

What is Sunset Reflection printed on?
It is a photo print on Matt Enhanced paper (230 g), the paper NOKUKO uses for its photography prints. The frame shown in the product photographs is for illustration and is not included.

Which sizes is Sunset Reflection available in?
Two portrait sizes: 30x40 cm and 50x70 cm. The picture is taller than it is wide, so it suits a hallway, a narrow stretch of wall or the space above a desk.

Are there different editions or colour versions of Sunset Reflection?
No. It is one photograph in one version, offered in the two sizes. There are no colour editions.

Is Sunset Reflection a limited edition?
No. It is an open edition photo print and is not one of the eight limited editions NOKUKO holds. No certificate of authenticity is issued, because certificates accompany NOKUKO's original works rather than its prints.