« My Girlfriend Natalie »

2002

Collages of DIN A4 Ink-jet Prints

292 x 170 - 255 cm

2003

Collages of DIN A4 Ink-jet Prints

292 x 180 - 235 cm

2009

Pencil tracing

DIN A4+

All images used are

of Natalie Portman and

found on the internet.

Photographers unnamed.

Courtesy of the internet.

In the age of the Internet the mass media have a powerful impact on show business. The pictures of actress Natalie Portman that Björnsson selects from what is available online differ from his series of other actresses in that they are not all from professional sittings. Some seem to have been taken outdoors by paparazzi when Portman was out on an errand or attending a social event. Their snapshot quality conveys an illusion of proximity that the staged photographs circulating on the Web lack. Björnsson still includes a few clichéd pictures of the young star posing for the camera. Having blown up the digital images in the “privacy” of his studio, he prints them on his A4 home printer and assembles them to floor-to-ceiling size portraits.
Björnsson here plays off the elements of the public and the private against each other, presenting a one-way intimacy with a celebrity, while at the same time highlighting the power of images and the absurdity of the celebrity culture.