Eva Gylfe and Tina Umer  – 2019 anniversary grants 

Eva Gylfe receives the grant in the area of communication of science and Tina Umer in digital photography.

In conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the Hasselblad Foundation in 2019, we are awarding two grants in order to highlight two areas of interest: the natural sciences and photography. Within the natural sciences, we are recognizing the importance of communication. The 200,000SEK grant is geared toward researchers, journalists, and those working in communications who are striving to make research in the natural sciences more accessible.

Eva Gylfe and Tina Umer have been selected as the 2019 grant recipients.

Eva Gylfe is the grant recipient in the area of natural science communications. Eva Gylfe is a communicator and coordinator at the Bolin Centre for Climate Research at Stockholm University.

The jury’s motivation:
“With a high degree of expertise in the natural sciences, Eva Gylfe has communicated information about the environment and nature in a factual and inspiring fashion. Her ambition to develop digital information concerning the climate at the Bolin Centre for Climate Research is especially urgent today, as young people continue to demonstrate an increased engagement with climate issues.”

Tina Umer is the grant recipient in the area of digital photography. Tina Umer is a recent graduate of the Master’s program in photography at Valand Academy at Gothenburg University.

The jury’s motivation:

“Umer’s work fills the space, where the space is not only the walls but also floors and the entire room in a simultaneously established and innovative fashion. Established because this aesthetic has its roots in the 1920s when, among others, Russian constructivists conducted radical experiments in how to exhibit photographs as objects. Innovative, since modern photography has often been reduced to “print thinking,” that is, where photographic images have been installed in large or small frames and hung in rows on a wall. Innovative also in the fact that Umer attempts to analyze today’s digital and photographic reality as a social phenomenon.”

Tina Umer’s work provides a fresh glimpse of how photography can be aesthetically expanded in an exhibition context. She also poses important questions concerning ‘photographic thinking’ today. As a grant recipient and as a trailblazer with regard to the development of photography as a visual art, she is an excellent representative of the Hasselblad Foundation.”