Today he is working with various themes like nature, environment, travel, social portraits and so on, still true to his oldfashioned black and white photograph. His art is ”real photography” using established Fine Art techniques with silver-gelatine paper and chemistry. He either uses a 6x7 cm rangefinder camera or a 4”x5” view camera, field type.
He does not necessarily work documentary, but often focuses on what he wants you to see: a detail, a form small or large, a sculptural quality he sees. The rest may remain an untold story. In a world where the volume and kind of visual impressions are massively increasing, Solli believes in simplicity and purity in the message. He avoids ”difficult” symbolism and concepts that may need written instructions and explanations.
The form and the natural light does the job he wants. It is his goal to capture the purity and the descrete richness of tones and contrast, thus giving the beauty that only the traditional black and white technique can express. He uses the techniques and craftmanship that gives his prints the individuality and quality that will be more and more rare in the future. Digital photography and computerbased manipulation is not a part of his program.
To keep the visual quality and surface of the paper, he prefers to mount his large prints onto aluminium plates, without disturbing glass and frames, and a discrete frame to mark the edge. He makes prints in any sizes from 8”x10” (20 x 25 cm) up to the extreme 48”x60” (120 x 150 cm), and does all the work himself, also the mounting, in his own workshop in Asker. All copies are limited edition, 5 up to 30, depending upon size. Lifetime of his seleniumtoned archival technique is up to several hundreds of years, far exceeding that of the modern scanned and computerassisted printing methods.
Kjell Solli is a member of the Society of Fine Art Photographers in Norway (Forbundet Frie Fotografer).