

The Lekker Light Project:

Norway meets South Africa
We are Lisa Karina and Cleo, two artists who share two great loves—alternative photographic printing and the natural world that surrounds us. United by a passion for creative collaboration, curiosity, and exploration, we have decided to bridge the vast physical distance between us and work together to artistically capture our environments.
Despite our shared interests and even similar artistic approaches, we find ourselves in contrasting circumstances. One of us is in the North, the other in the South. One lives in a country considered first-world, the other in one labeled third-world. One works in a cold to freezing climate with shorter days and a low UV index, while the other experiences a warm to hot climate with longer days and higher UV exposure.
By navigating these opposing environments together, we aim to learn, investigate, and experiment with a unified approach to alternative photography—creating art with the very elements we seek to explore.

Our Artistic Mission
Our goal is to document and compare results using the same processes, shaped by the unique conditions of our respective landscapes.
We will be working across various alternative photographic media, namely cyanotype, lumen, chemilumen, and cyanolumen. These processes are poetic in their dependence on natural forces—light, temperature, moisture, and humidity—to shape the final image.
Kelp collected from Cape Town’s shores, moss foraged in Norway’s forests, bed salt and seawater, ice and frost—each material carries the essence of its place, influencing the outcome of the work.
Through this collaboration, we seek to document how these processes respond differently as a direct result of the stark environmental contrasts in which we create.

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And yet, despite these differences, we are creating together in real time, across continents. This, in turn, introduces another striking contrast—while our processes are rooted in history, the modern technologies that connect us allow for shared presence and simultaneous creation.
This collaboration speaks to many things: unity in creativity, the intersection of art and science, and the innate drive to explore through making. It is also about contributing to an international community of alternative photographic enthusiasts—artists and experimenters working in even more diverse environments than our own. In doing so, we help keep these historical processes alive while fostering ongoing discussions about our natural world and our place within it.

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The idea of a shared experience within vast differences led us to the name The Lekker Light Project: Norway Meets South Africa.
One day, during a call, Cleo from South Africa was expressing how great the day had been, using the South African expression lekker. To her surprise, Lisa Karina understood the word immediately, explaining that in Norway, they use lekker too—with the same pronunciation and meaning. It’s a word of positivity, difficult to translate into languages that don’t use it, yet deeply familiar to both of us. It can express excitement, affection, or even describe something delicious.
This small, unexpected discovery stayed with us—a poetic reflection of our collaboration: two artists in vastly different landscapes, connected by a word neither of us can quite explain to those unfamiliar with it.
And so, we create under the same light—divided by distance, yet unified by something as simple and profound as
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