How Superman Would Look if He Was an Average Dude Trying to Fly

For years Superman has endured as the quintessential superhero—strong, brave, and practically invincible. But in Norwegian photographer Ole Marius Jørgensen's wistful and gently humorous images, the Last Son of Krypton is just one man at the center of a small drama about the end of childhood.

Superman has long endured as the quintessential superhero—strong, brave, and practically invincible. But in Norwegian photographer Ole Marius Jørgensen's wistful and gently humorous images, the Last Son of Krypton is but one man at the center of a small drama about the end of childhood.

In No.Superhero, a collection of images depicting Superman as an average guy just trying to fly, Jørgensen confronts the difficulty of making dreams come true—and of coming to terms with the fact some of them won't.

Nothing in the series is taken from Jørgensen's own childhood; rather, he "tried to make a fantasy world" to depict the struggles of achieving one's goals in life. He does, however, draw parallels between the quest for flight depicted in his series and his own decade-long ascent as a professional photographer.

"It's about chasing your dream," Jørgensen says. "And it's the process I'm going through."

Growing up, the photographer was "bombarded" with American pop culture, soaking in Star Wars and the world of He-Man. His first comic book love was the Incredible Hulk, and he was later drawn to the clean lines and bright colors of the Roy Lichtenstein-like classic Superman style.

He's since stopped reading Superman but still recognizes the Pop Art appeal, even as the style of his series has moved far beyond that inspiration. With its selectively blurred realism, No.Superhero is closer to the work of Matthew Southworth than any Golden Age artist.

Jørgensen's first dream was to be a filmmaker. He was drawn to movies—particularly American movies—and spent two years in film school in England and Norway. But the realities of movie production discouraged him from pursuing it further. "You have to fight a hundred people, and you need millions of dollars," he says.

While he's given on up film, he's carried those storytelling instincts into his photography. In No.Superhero, the images suggest action before and after the shutter closes, and demonstrate an ability to convey both kinetic bursts and quiet moments of pathos. And his process in some ways mirrors the major beats of a film production, including location scouting, casting, scheduling shoots—no small feat in Norwegian weather.

Like conventional comic artists, Jørgensen handles his backgrounds and foregrounds separately. He's built a library of more than 200 skies, personal stock images sorted by weather and time of day, that he plugs into his storyboarded scenes.

For No.Superhero it was important to Jørgensen that the project had a "touch of Norway." It's not the snow that makes the series Norwegian, he says, it's that his Supermen are—literally and figuratively—down-to-Earth. "We are on the ground," he says, referring to Norwegian values that discourage high-flying public behavior.

Jørgensen credits some time in New York with helping him develop an ambitious artistic alter ego. For a previous project titled B-31 Ward, he broke with decorum by sneaking into an asylum during a two-year period to hurriedly snap its surreal series. It became the center of a minor controversy, but it is also his most successful commercial work to date.

These days Jørgensen is once again looking for inspiration close to home. His current work in progress is called The Way North and has the same DNA as Game of Thrones, with vivid renderings of characters from Scandinavian mythology. The images are as stark and beautiful as those in his Superman series, but the subjects seem far less likely to stumble and fall.