New Nordic Photography 2011
May 28–August 21 2011
Every summer since 2006, the Hasselblad Foundation has introduced young photographers in an exhibition with the theme: New Nordic Photography. Photographers with a recent degree and a link to the Nordic countries may apply to participate in the exhibition. Those who are accepted are nominated for the Foundation’s Victor fellowships to Great Britain and the United States.
Experts in photography select the participants for the exhibition and the recipients of the stipends. This year’s nine exhibitors were selected by Tessa Praun (curator at Magasin 3, Stockholm), Pirkko Siitari (director of Kiasma, Helsinki), as well as research manager Gunilla Knape and curator Dragana Vujanovic from the Hasselblad Foundation. The team gave priority to works that were well thought-through and triggered the curiosity of the viewer.
Two of the exhibitors will be awarded the Victor fellowships by Anne Williams (program director at London College of Communication) and Anna Fox (professor of photography at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham). The winner of the Bachelor’s group will study for a Master’s degree at one of the two above-mentioned institutions, while the winner of the Master’s group will have a five-month long residency at Location One in New York.
A distinguishing characteristic of the participants in New Nordic Photography 2011 is that they all received their degrees from the School of Photography at the University of Gothenburg, one of the most outstanding programs in photography in Europe. The School has a long relationship with the Hasselblad Foundation. Both the first director of the Hasselblad Center, Rune Hassner, and his successor, Gunilla Knape were driving forces behind the establishment of the School and its activities in the early 1980s. Together, the School of Photography and the Hasselblad Foundation contribute to making Gothenburg a strong center for photography in northern Europe.
The exhibitors in New Nordic Photography 2011 are:
Casia Bromberg (BA), Sven Drobnitza (MA), Joachim Fleinert (BA), Mandi Gavois (BA), Kerstin Hamilton (MA), Erika Hedman (BA), Linda Hofvander (MA), David Molander (MA), and Johannes Samuelsson (MA).
New Nordic Photography 2011 is dominated by the presence of politically and socially oriented photography. These contemporary photographers portray nuanced and complex social conditions. The projects consist of a wide thematic and esthetic range, often with a strong theoretical underpinning. The traditional distinction between documentary and art photography is not self-evident. The works display a variety of media, with elements of sculpture, painting and text-based projects. Documentary aspects are broken up and portrayals of reality take on the form of storytelling and essays. The exhibition comprises works that focus on reinterpretation of the traditional documentary tradition, much like the work of this year’s Hasselblad award winner Walid Raad.
Some of the photographers presented in the exhibition discuss the effects of globalized capitalism. They analyze the consequences of the disappearance of small local industries and the slow dissolution of the welfare state. The work of Kerstin Hamilton investigates values lost and the things we passively allow to decline. Her work takes an anthropological stance, adapting traditional field studies of a community in stagnation. Johannes Samuelsson’s project reflects a similar working method. His photo essay portrays a struggle as unequal as that between David and Goliath, between powerful market forces and two driving spirits. Casia Bromberg investigates the meaning of intimacy for humankind today, and the isolation created by human individualism. The work of David Molander examines architectural anatomy in search of the core of the urban society. Molander depicts modern-day ruins and unglamorous parts of the metropolitan landscape seldom found on city postcards.
In contrast to the socially committed projects, the exhibition also presents works that contemplate fundamental issues in photography, such as traces, memory and magic. Linda Hofvander is fascinated by the photographic material and of the enigmatic analogue processes in photography. She manifests the illusory qualities of photography by manipulating our senses. In his work, Joachim Fleinert uses one hundred-year-old glass negatives to shed light on the complex problems associated with maintaining digital as well as analogue photographic archives, and their vulnerability. He gives the observer the opportunity to determine the fate of historical material, and illustrates the issue of ownership in relation to our visual history.
Mandi Gavois borrows the dramaturgy of staged photography. His images seem to depict theater scenery, where the stage is illuminated in enchanting light. But in fact, the work portrays ordinary houses in actual residential neighborhoods. Surrounded by fences and separated from nature, the houses convey an artificial impression. Like the work of Mandi Gavois, that of Sven Drobnitza also contains an element of surprise. His detailed focus is on fatigued materials, layers of colors and moss, forming abstract patterns with clear references to the work of expressionist painters Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Drobnitza touches on the ability of photography to document traces in an intimate, tactile and sculptural way. Using equally simple means and with memories as her driving force, Erika Hedman produces photographs charged with condensed psychological narrative. Hedman’s photographic stories portray the memory of someone who is no longer alive.
Comparing New Nordic Photography 2011 and the exhibitions from previous years, there is a growing tendency towards documentary photography and a greater presence of social commitment as well as reflections on established traditions in photography. There is a desire to direct the critical gaze at the world, but also at the photographic medium.
Dragana Vujanovic
Curator