Fin Serck-Hanssen, Emilie, 2021. Fra boken Våre Liv ME Våre Stemmer, 2021.
Tidens ansikt – Portrettfotografi, traumer og minnekultur
Seminar med Andrea Gjestvang, Fin Serck-Hanssen, Øyvind Vågnes og Mette Sandbye 19. august 2021 kl 14-17. Detaljer og påmelding nederst på siden.
Andrea Gjestvangs En dag i historien er en samling portretter av overlevende etter terrorangrepet på Utøya 22. juli 2011. Prosjektet er en milepæl i norsk dokumentarfotografi, men har aldri før vært presentert som en soloutstilling i Norge. Fra 15. juli til 3. oktober 2021 vises Gjestvangs bilder på Sukkerbiten. I den forbindelse inviterer Fotografihuset til seminar med Andrea Gjestvang, Fin Serck-Hanssen, Øyvind Vågnes og Mette Sandbye om portrettfotografi, traumer og minnekultur. Her vil de blant annet diskutere disse spørsmålene: Hva er forholdet mellom den individuelle erfaringen og vår felles historie i portrettfotografiet? Kan portrettfotografier være empatiske, eller er de først og fremst polemiske? Og kan portretter bidra til bearbeiding av personlige og kollektive erfaringer og traumer? Moderator er kunsthistoriker og kritiker Heidi Bale Amundsen.
Andrea Gjestvang, Cecilie, 2012. Fra boken En dag i historien, 2012.
Andrea Gjestvang
Andrea Gjestvang is a photographer with an intimate documentary style. She is best known for the portrait series A Day in History , which shows young survivors of the terrorist attack on Utøya on July 22, 2011. The project received international recognition and received a number of awards, including L’Iris d’Or / Sony World Photography Awards Photographer of the Year 2013. Gjestvang’s pictures have been presented in a number of international publications, such as Time Magazine, The New York Times, Stern and Newsweek Japan, and they have been shown at, among others, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, Munich Stadtmuseum and The National Photographic Museum of Colombia. Gjestvang has extensive experience as a photo editor and photography teacher, and has curated several exhibitions. A day in history is currently shown at Fotografihuset.
Andrea Gjestvang will present A Day in History ; both a selection of portraits from 2012 and new ones from 2021. In the post, she will talk about the meetings with those she photographs and about how she went about portraying people in a vulnerable situation.
Fin Serck-Hanssen
Fin Serck-Hanssen has made a name for himself as a photographer in both the Norwegian and international context since the 1980s. His paintings are represented in a number of central art institutions, including in the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in England and in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo. His main motive is the body, and he works mostly in series. His breakthrough was a series of photographs from the late 1980s, of naked male bodies in water. Since then, he has portrayed AIDS patients, ME patients and torture victims. The book Hedda , which follows a young person through gender-confirming treatment, will be launched at the Photo Gallery in Oslo on 22 August 2021.
Fin Serck-Hanssen will talk about his work through thirty years of photographic portraits of people in vulnerable situations.
Øyvind Vågnes
Øyvind Vågnes is a professor of visual culture at the Department of Information and Media Studies at the University of Bergen. His research focuses on visual culture in a broad sense, and he has published widely on how the traumatic is interpreted and managed in various media, including Zaprudered: The Kennedy Assassination Film in Visual Culture (Texas University Press, 2011) and the essay «A Day in History: Andrea Gjestvang’s 22 July Photographs »( October 24, 2017). Vågnes also works as a critic, and as co-editor of the Journal of Visual Culture . In addition, he is a fiction writer, and received the Nynorsk Literature Prize for the novel Ekko in 2005.
In an article from 2017 about Andrea Gjestvang’s «A day in history», Øyvind Vågnes develops the concept of «committed spectatorship» to describe the binding relationship between Gjestvang’s photo series and the viewer. In his post, Vågnes will bring up this concept again and discuss what it means today, when he looks at the same pictures four years later.
Mette Sandbye
Mette Sandbye is a professor of photography studies at the University of Copenhagen and a long-time art critic. She is interested in contemporary art and photography as part of a broad visual culture and has written a number of books in the field, such as Boring Pictures. Snapshot Aesthetics of Photography (2007), Memorials. Time and memory in photography (2001) and Manual for Danish contemporary art (2006, with Lisbeth Bonde). She has also been the editor of several publications, such as Dansk Fotografihistorie (2004) and Digital Snaps. The new face of photography (2013, with Jonas Larsen). Sandbye is currently working on curating Fotografisk Center’s 25th anniversary exhibition.
In the post «The Portrait as a Gateway to the Collective Disaster», Sandbye will discuss Susan Sontag’s thoughts on «experiencing the suffering of others» and Judith Butler’s concept of «grievable lives» – based on the book Memorials. Time and memory in photography . She will draw a line through contemporary art’s use of the portrait from Christian Boltanski and Igor Savchenko to Pia Arke and Kent Klich.
Time: Thursday 19.8. at 14-17
Place: Sukkerbiten, Nylandsveien 28. 0150 Oslo
