Every year the Hasselblad Foundation awards the Victor Fellowship to a recent graduate photographer from one of the Nordic countries where the winner is offered a one-year academic postgraduate education in England. Hasselblad Center proudly presents the annual summer exhibition New Nordic Photography that brings together the ten nominees, and showcases a selection of their work.

“New Nordic Photography is a forum for supporting and presenting the work of young photographers in an attempt to distinguish a trend or direction in contemporary Nordic photography. The idea of the exhibition is to demonstrate some of the concepts and aesthetic approaches that young artists and photographers apply to their medium today.

This year's exhibition of New Nordic Photography – which has the sub-title Sense of Loss, Sense of Gain - focuses on a subjective and individual story. The contemporary photography presented in this selection reflects the ongoing research on how our identity is construed and how the photographic image is arranged. The photographers research the mental state in time and space. They do not use the photograph to make a direct political or social statement or to capture a crucial moment. Instead, they use the light conditions and associative symbols, or transform the photograph to abstract forms. They borrow from, and are inspired by, other genres such as film, fashion and literature, to dissect the image.

The stories that the observer is a party to have a strong poetic and emotional nature and communicate vulnerability and marginalisation. They discuss themes such as memories, nostalgia, and voyeurism or let the camera become a tool of encroachment. They are not attempting to create an adequate story or give the portraits subjectivity, but expose the portraits by putting them into a setting that almost resembles torture.

It feels as if we have lost something – and perhaps gained something else. And each time a picture is encountered a discussion between these two states arises.”

Liv Stoltz – Curator for New Nordic Photography 2007

Participating photographers:
Nadja von Bahr
Johan Bergström
Nadja Bournonville
Katarina Elvén
Ann Eringstam
Emma Fredriksson
Anna Linderstam
Laura Nissinen
Mikael Näsström
Kalle Sanner
and the 2006 Victor Fellowship holder Daniel Andersson