Photographer Christoffer Relander Collects Memories In An Unusual Way

It’s natural to want to save pleasant memories, be it through photographs, video, or audio recordings. Christoffer Relander has created a unique twist on preservation by using double exposure photography and landscapes from his childhood. He “places” the miniaturized nature scenes into jars, capturing a moment that’s now confined in a miniature time capsule. Calling the series Jarred & Displaced, it’s the second installment of this surreal collection.

Double exposure photography can be created in a variety of ways. Today, it’s most commonly done with Photoshop, but there are other (less hi-tech) ways to combine two images. Relander prefers to work with an analog approach and produce all of his alluring images in camera. “This project was not created or layered in an external software,” Relander writes. “Images are not put into physical jars (as is misunderstood sometimes), only blended into one photograph.”

We first marveled over Jarred & Displaced a year ago, and Relander has made one big change since then—everything is in color. The shift from black and white alters not just the vibrancy, but the emotional tone of the images as well. In monochrome, the places in the jars felt desolate and lonely. Now, the dreamy double exposure photos have a sense of hope—Relander is literally taking us out of the dark and into the light.

He uses double exposure photography techniques to put locales from his childhood into small jars.

The double exposure technique is done completely analog—all of the landscapes are composed in camera.