Lights in the woods
Thanks to the wonders of social media I came across information about an upcoming art installation in the nearby Skrylle woods, not too far from where I live, where a lighting designer called Micaela Pärsdotter Andersson, would put up a number of light installations at one of the foot paths in the woods in an art piece she called “Gömda världar, glömda världar” (Hidden worlds, forgotten worlds). The word play works better in Swedish since the the words for hidden and forgotten are very similar, but that’s what the title means.
The lights illuminating the art pieces would be seen through the month of February 2026, switched on at sunset and kept alight for a few hours each evening for spectators to experience and enjoy. Right at the tail end of this on February 25th and 26th I went out there with my camera and a tripod to take some photos in the low light environment. The first night I was out there I arrived a bit late so it was more or less totally dark by the time I got there and those were not the best conditions to capture the art pieces. The second night though I timed it a bit better and there was still a bit of faint blue hour light in the sky and that made for better (and easier) photo conditions.
The light pulsed and moved back and forth in this light tube, but that’s kind of difficult to show in a still image…
One of the cooler aspects of the art piece was that the the string of lights were all wrapped with paper lanterns with children’s drawings on them, almost 700 of them, all unique. In a way seeing them out there in the woods reminded me of seeing the luminaries of Albuquerque back in 2009, traditional lights surrounding the Old Square there.
Two of the hundreds of paper lanterns that school kids had produced for this exhibition.
It was nice to have at least a little bit of light left from the skies, making for a nice contrast between the blueish daylight and the warm lamp light.
There were a lot of little points of lights in the woods, moving around courtesy of this disco ball up in the trees.
You can see all kinds of weird things if you pay attention to what is around you, including above you…
The gentle light of these “luminaries” leading the way back to the recreation center and then onto the car park.
