Electrification, Ripples, and a Glass Plate, a group exhibition curated by Hilde Methi, is on view at the Fotogalleriet Foundation in Oslo. The exhibition revolves around restorative energy, non-extractivist energy, solar energy, hydrological energy, and human and beyond-human bodies, producing entropic forms of rest and resistance.
“While it is never quite clear to us where such a trail begins or ends, it nonetheless grants us a way to engage with those who have trodden it before us as well as those tasked with keeping it open after we are gone.”
Kehrer Verlag publishes Fotogalleriet Oslo (Hrsg.) Conversations on Photography
Ann-Christine Eek, Excerpt from Arbeta - inte slita ut sig series, 1974 Courtesy the artist.
NEW YORK, NY
.- Instead of presenting an objective, historical overview, Conversations on Photography grapples with the rapidly expanding and forward-thinking nature of the photographic field from the perspective of the Nordic region by putting national and international contributors into conversation. These discussions between some of photographys foremost contemporary practitioners provide unique insights into overlooked or erased stories, moments, and movements in the history of the medium, and of Fotogalleriet. Their voices contribute to analyzing a discipline whose potential is yetto be fully acknowledged within the larger field of contemporary art a discipline that continues to spearhead new thinking around the role of art and its social motivations and responsibilities.
The Sámi on Camera
Photographs of the Sámi taken in the 19th and 20th centuries act as ‘emotional archives’, offering an alternative history of Europe’s longest surviving indigenous people.
Skolt Sámi man in Sevettijärvi, Inari municipality, Finland. Photograph by Ernest Dixon, 1950s. Courtesy of the Sámi Museum Siida, Finland.
At the end of the last Ice Age, more than 10,000 years ago, groups of hunter-gatherers ventured into northern Scandinavia, becoming the region’s first inhabitants. From southern Norway, the Fosna – descendants of the nomadic Ahrensburg culture in north-central Europe – followed the thaw north to the Arctic Circle and populated the coastline of the Norwegian Sea. Around 1,000 km to the east, another group of nomads inhabiting the southern shores of Russia’s Lake Onega and Lake Ladoga also moved north and west to settle in Finnish Lapland. Intermixing and establishing settlements, they would become Europe’s longest survivin