Favourite Pictures of the Year - 3

Sometimes the simplest things can trigger off a whole series of thoughts, and photographs do not have to be rich in detail or technically perfect to capture exactly a particular atmosphere or mood or moment. The reason I took this picture of a lowly biro lying on a window sill was that apart from a work-light this was the only object in a set of empty rooms I visited in the autumn. And the pen seemed so perfectly apt because these rooms were once a former apartment of Henrik Ibsen and this was his workroom. It was here that he wrote The Master Builder back in the 1890s, for instance. The vast building that housed these elegant apartments was later taken over by the Norwegian foreign ministry and was then the headquarters of the Gestapo during the German occupation of the Second World War. A building with a history, in other words. Now being totally renovated it was open to the public for one day and I did not want to miss this rare chance to see where Ibsen had once lived. His last home, just up the street, is of course more well-known and grandiose as that houses the Ibsen musuem, but here there was a strange sense of immediacy, as if Ibsen had only just left –there was something in the air; empty rooms are often so much more evocative than filled one, as if the walls themselves are finally able to speak. Maybe it’s just my imagination! The pen was, of course, left there by accident -no doubt by an architect or planner, but I like to think of it representing the great writer himself. Perhaps he too once placed a pen here while ruminating over the next words to write, looking out of this very window...Location: Oslo, Norway