With twenty years’ experience working in digital media, if I see something beautiful and I can’t figure out how it was made, I feel deeply compelled to reach out to the artist.

I set up a call to speak with Espen Kluge about his work and caught him during a visit to Sweden to help his fiancee prepare her apartment for sale.

I was honestly a bit surprised to hear Kluge speak perfect English because I had assumed his deadpan titles like “makes great choices while angry“ and “cruise ships and police cars“ were in part a function of English not being his first language. He explained that he gets his titles by pulling snippets from the text associated with the source images he uses to create his portraits. He was a bit apologetic about this, and wondered aloud if he should spend more time on the titles. I assured him the titles added just the right amount of mystery and fun while avoiding the trap of becoming overly pretentious and serious.

Kluge shared that he grew up in Norway, where he still lives and works today. He earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts but then pivoted and studied composition in music for TV and film for his master’s degree.

Kluge’s music, like his portraits, is psychologically nuanced and exploratory. You can hear his soundtrack for the 2018 television show Who Killed Birgitte? on Spotify. I listened to it while writing this post and highly recommend it. It’s my new go-to music for writing.