Adam Jeppesen is a traveller and explorer. For The Flatland Camp Project (2011-2012) he travelled alone from the North Pole through the Americas down to Antarctica. The journey took 487 days. But it is not the specific environment or the landscape he seems to explore so much as his inner world. The interior merges with the exterior suggesting a mental space. This is perhaps most evident in the two works xcopy V and xcopy XIV. Here, Jeppesen’s body is partially dissolved, becoming one with its surroundings. But even the photographs that lack a clear subject have a strong human presence, and Jeppesen’s relationship with the landscape is both reverential and romantic.

Donald Crowhurst’s fate is well known to many. He died in 1969 while sailing solo around the world; a desperate attempt by an amateur sailor to win the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. History states that during his time at sea, Crowhurst went insane – his logbooks testify to this – and eventually took his own life. Many artists have been directly influenced by Crowhurst’s fate. Jeppesen is probably not one of them. However, I sense something of Crowhurst in Jeppesen’s searching. How do you feel after 487 days in solitude in an unknown environment? Maybe there is both desperation and satisfaction simultaneously – a higher mental state where one loses sense of time and space?

Jeppesen’s images have been compared previously to dream scenarios. For me it is the opposite. The senses, as well as time and space, merge in a fully conscious state. Jeppesen finds the dream in his waking surroundings. And, despite its personal elements, his work nevertheless encourages viewers to enter their own space of contemplation. Jeppesen’s very private journey becomes potentially universal. The photographs’ beauty also contains darker undercurrents; a depth that captures viewers and draws them into an unspecified environment between a physical and mental place. This strange state, made manifest in Jeppesen’s imagery, both attracts and frightens.

In several photographs from The Flatland Camp Project the artist uses pins – resembling a starry sky – in the assembly. The reference to old maps and how routes were marked out when travelling is also apparent. At the same time, they function – together with the copying technique he uses – as a commentary on photography as a medium. Jeppesen copies many of his works with a traditional photocopier and prints on ordinary paper. Walter Benjamin’s theories of the artwork in an age of mechanical reproduction and the social aspect are evident in Jeppesen’s personal view of the world that he penetrates deeply and which he has combined with modern equipment. And, at the same time, the apparent wear and tear of the photographs – along with blurred black marks – testify to the journey and everything’s mortality in a highly delicate way.