Carlsen’s career started at the age of 16 when he sold a photo to the local newspaper. The photo showed the police yelling at him and his friends. He is best known for his distorted, monochromatic photographs of human figures, published as a conversational book with Roger Ballen, No Joke (Mörel Books). Carlsen’s human shapes without a face, with too many eyes, without legs, consisting only of lower parts of the body, deconstruct the common principles of photography. Carlsen, the meticulous visual dadaist, started his carrier photographing crime scenes and moved into commercial photography. Uncomfortable with the result of his own creatures, he didn’t show his first prototype to anyone for a year.