Status: Archived

• Ellisif Wessel

  Perspektivet Museum is putting on the exhibition ”Ellisif Wessel – You ask for my photograph,” a travelling exhibition from the publishing firm Orkana. This exhibition is one of two that is being held in conjunction with Sámi Week 2008.

  Photo pioneer, trade union activist, newspaper debater, author and communist Ellisif Wessel (1866-1949) documented a Finnmark in change through the lens of her camera. Finnmark around the turn of the 20th century was in a turmoil of change and experienced a clash of cultures – a meeting of five tribes. The photographs were taken throughout a life full of contrasts across a boundless landscape. Her photos are a unique source for getting acquainted with the Finnmark that disappeared when Germany put into effect its ”scorched earth policy” during World War II.

  Ellisif Wessel got involved in people’s living conditions in Finnmark, and became known for her significant political and social commitment. She accompanied her husband on his journeys as a doctor, and was a skilled photographer.

  These pictures are from the Sør-Varanger Museum’s photo collection. Ellisif Wessel left between 600 and 700 motifs. Her glass panel collection was destroyed when Kirkenes was bombed; but thanks to her having sent photo albums to friends and family throughout the country, quite a few motifs have been preserved and copied.

  A book has also been published with the same title in the same project. The exhibition contains 35 motifs in large format, and the book contains around another 220.

  

  

  

  

  

  
  12. April 2016

  •

  •

• Contemporary Art from RidduDuottarMuseat

  Perspektivet Museum celebrated Sámi Week 2008 by opening a fresh, youthful and innovative art exhibition, which offered selected works of art from RiddoDuottarMuseat, De Samiske Samlinger i Karasjok. A total of 20 pieces of art were presented, all of high quality, with a diversity of expressions and techniques. Several works have not been on displayed before in Norway.

  ”I produce pictures; I also happen to be Sámi. What I do isn’t necessary Sámi art; rather, it is art produced by a Sámi. Art cannot be determined by your origins or your ethnic identity. But that doesn’t mean that one’s roots and environment don’t show up in one’s work,” says Merja Aletta Ranttila, who was represented at the exhibition with graphic items. Ranttila comes from Karigasniemi in Finland.

  

  

  

  Critical postcards
  Marja Helander was represented by four photographs. She is originally from Utsjok, but grew up in Helsinki; she got together with her Sámi relatives during her school holidays. Although her photos are rooted in her Sámi background, they tell us about a modern human being who feels set adrift when placed in a traditional Sámi context. By the same token, she often feels alienated in the non-Sámi environment in which she grew up. Helander feels that the Sámis in Finland are often characterized as though they were still living in the 1940’s, as though the modern world had not put its mark on Sámi society. These are some of the reasons why she wants her pictures to be viewed as critical postcards, as it were.

  Old mythical stories
  The artist and poet Rose-Marie Huuva is from Kiruna in northern Sweden. Her picture is called Ahku 448 vuorkka, and shows a photograph of her grandmother against a backdrop of small ”gifts” wrapped in colourful fabrics (see photo illustration). In each gift there is a little remembrance. In the museum’s small film room you could see ”Silbaduoddariid”/ ”Behind the silverwind.” a short film of 3 ½ minutes by Gjert Rognli from Kåfjord in northern Troms. This is a surrealistic and spiritual journey, in which the shaman takes us into the realm of the dead in order to find out what sacrifices are required. The film is beautifully poetic and has won a number of prizes.

  Other exhibitors
  The only exhibitor living in Tromsø Andreas Sarri from Kiruna. He showed three photographs from the exhibition ”Welcome to shittown.” The subjects are from the Sámi town Lovozero outside Murmansk. Other artists who were represented by their works are these: Odd Sivertsen (painting), Asbjørn Forsøget (painting), May-Liss Nilsen (painting), Arnold Johansen (graphic art), Outi Pieski (painting), Marja Helander, Edil Sande (collage) og Alf Magne Salo (painting).

  12. April 2016

  •

  •

• A Brave New World

  The exhibition Brave New World  is a colaboration between photographer Thomas Haugersveen and The Salvation Army, who runs extensive HIV/AIDS relief work in the south of Africa. UNAIDS recon that 5 millon people -aprox 21%- is infected by the disease in this part of Africa. In Botswana alone 1/3 of the population is infected according to the same sources.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  12. April 2016

  •

  •

• Twins & American Odessey

  From 21 October 2006 through 22 January 2007, one of the most celebrated and famous photographer’s of our time, American Mary Ellen Mark, will be visiting Tromsø and North Norway for the first time with her photo exhibitions “American Odyssey” and “Twins”.

  The exhibitions are produced by Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg. “American Odyssey” is a retrospective exhibition of her pictures from “the other America” during the period 1963-1999. Many of the pictures in the exhibition are part of what the photographer herself has selected as her most iconic work. “Twins” contains her award-winning portraits of twins taken during the Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio in 2001/2002. The film Twins, directed by her husband Martin Bell, is also being shown in the exhibition.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  During the course of an extraordinary career that spans more than 40 years, Mary Ellen Mark has entered many worlds and has taken them very seriously. She herself claims that she had her breakthrough as a photographer in 1969 while following the filming of Federico Fellini’s Satyricon. In the 1970s, she was a still photographer in the world of films where she portrayed so-called celebrities, later to become involved in a number of projects in collaboration with large reporting magazines like Life Magazine and NY Times Magazine. Her naked portrayals of female patients with severe psychological dysfunctions were the direct result of Mark’s assignment during the filming of Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in a mental hospital in Oregon. Many of the photos in American Odyssey are the result of long-term assignments for magazines and newspapers, often from the photographer’s own ideas.

  

  Mary Ellen Mark’s photographs are the result of a great artist’s work, but also of the presence of a warm and involved human being. A strong desire to get close up to, study and understand the complex, rich variations in the human existence make Mary Ellen Mark’s photographs very personal. Her great sympathy lies definitively with the unheroic ordinary person, the ones she calls The Unfamous. In many cases, they are people who, for one reason or another, find themselves on the fringes of the successful, normal America. They can be teenagers on the run, street children or orphans, or more special adaptations and cultural phenomena like rodeo riders in Texas and circus performers in Brooklyn.

  12. April 2016

  •

  •

• Duodji

  Duodji, which is produced by Varanger Sámi Museum, is the result of a competition held by the museum in 2000. The exhibition consists of 65 works of very high quality, created by Sámi craftsmen from the entire Sámi region in Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Duodji shows many different types of objects, with great variation in choice of materials. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  The concept “duodji” has gradually received recognition as a total concept for Sámi handicrafts, articles of home industry, woodwork and light industry, and builds on knowledge and skills that have been handed down from generation to generation. Scarcely anything characterises “the Sámi” more than precisely duodji. In this exhibition, the craftsmanlike and artistic execution is in focus, but in the old society, the utility value was the most important. In addition to covering one’s own needs, products from Sámi home industry and handicrafts were means of payment in exchange for other necessities and as payment of taxes.

  The most common raw materials, bones/antlers, reindeer skins, fibres and wooden materials, are found in the nearby natural surroundings. But the Sámi have also had good access to imported materials of textiles, beads and metals. Traditional decorations on antler and bone products have shaped the models for silver copies, which today are known as Sámi jewellery art. Colour, shape, use of materials, ornamentation and practical design reveal variations amongst districts and across borders, and are an indication of contact and mutual influence. This fascinating wealth in choice of materials, techniques and decoration is very evident in the exhibition.

  Duodji is being done in many Sámi homes today. But duodji is also an industry in growth that contributes to activity, well-being and workplaces for women in the districts. As a strong expression for “the Sámi”, duodji is also important for the dissemination and preservation of Sámi culture. And that is precisely a goal of this beautiful exhibition from Varanger Sámi Museum.Varanger Samiske Museum

  In association with Sámi Week, Perspektivet Museum is showing the travelling exhibition, Duodji.

  12. April 2016

  •

  •

• Greetings from Tromsø

  Tourism and postcards are well connected. Mass- produced pictures with local motifs are usually the easiest and cheapest form of souvenirs one can buy.

  It is presumed that the first postcards with Tromsø motifs were produced in Germany in the early 1880s. They appeared simultaneously as the city became a popular destination for foreign travellers, and were sold onboard the tourist ships that dropped anchor in the harbour during the summer.

  

  

  

  The interest for postcards spread quickly, and starting in the 1890s, Tromsø cards were also being published in Norway. The oldest cards usually consisted of several small pictures (vignettes) combined with the mandatory text, “Greetings from Tromsø”. Gradually, the choice of motifs was extended to include the city’s labour district and new buildings.

  The classical “tourist motifs” still dominated. The most popular were the cards with overview photos of the city, Tromsø Harbour, Storgata (Main Street) and the Town Square, Samis dressed in their national costumes, Tromsø Cathedral and Claus Andersen’s company with arctic souvenirs. The 1960s saw the arrival of coloured cards with Tromsø Bridge and the Arctic Cathedral as motifs, important symbols of a modern Tromsø in growth.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  The exhibition “Greetings from Tromsø” shows a small selection of the estimated 3000 different postcards that are found of the city.

  12. April 2016

  •

  •

• Stories about a house

  Perspektivet Museum is located in one of the city’s most elegant wooden houses, built in 1838 by merchant Daniel Mack. From 1911-2001, the building served as Folkets Hus (People’s House), in the true sense of the word. Here, everything from union meetings to senior citizens exercise groups, banquets and rock concerts took place.

  Virtually all of Tromsø city’s history can be told with a starting point in the old, listed neoclassical estate.

  We have brought out some of the most important events and colourful personalities that can be tied to the long history of this house.

  

  

  

  
  12. April 2016

  •

  •

• Emperor and Galilean

  The subject matters of Ibsen’s play manifest themselves in Tobreluts’ classical and Christian motifs, in their anachronistic temporality and in their experimental form. Her anachronism conflates past, present and future, her many constellations of complementary pairs and triptychs parallel the dualities and the third empire of Ibsen’s drama, and her digital manipulation comments upon and challenges the traditional artistic media of painting and photo in the way Ibsen’s play offers imaginative representations of his sources.

  Ibsen presents a historical drama that attends to the inner life and the spirit of the time in both the 4^th century Roman Empire and the 19^th century Europe. Tobreluts visual art meditates upon Ibsen’s play and our own time: Ideological clashes belong to today’s society, secularisation and religion are still at odds, the autonomy of arts are under constant pressure. Tobreluts’ anachronistic features reveal the temporal complexity of history, modernity and future, just as the surrealist tendency suggests strife for reconciliation of inner life and social order when life appears absurd. Her highly manipulated visions of historical settings and works of art hint of renewal, falsification and denial of history. Rontgen-like images indicate new types of technology for research into history, but also today’s surgical state supervision of the individual. Like Ibsen’s and Tobreluts’ time, our time is also a time of change.

  Tobreluts’ fascinating images in Emperor and Galilean revive and illuminate Ibsen’s great play and reflect upon the world drama of today.

  Ruben Moi, University of Tromsø

  

  

  

   

  12. April 2016

  •

  •

• Photographs from Finnmark in the 1960´s

  Faithful to tradition we celebrate Sámi Week in Tromsø with an exhibition where the Sámi are reflected in one form or another and mode of expression. This year we are delighted to be able to invite the general public to an encounter with two photographers who in their respective ways are unique in the Nordic artistic and photographic landscape.

  The exhibition deals with identity, moods, everyday life, people, nature, closeness and distance. Most of the photographs feature strong images of life in a remote landscape and of encounters between traditions and ways of life, past and present, time and space, silence and noise.

  The photographs define Kivijärvi’s interpretation of multicultural Finnmark in the 1960s. Kivijärvi’s surviving collection is characterised by the artist’s awareness of cultural, social and religious diversity, and his commitment to marginalised group on the edge of society, particularly in the northern regions.

  The photographs are from the exhibition 15 years on – the new age has begun, which was held at The Museum of Post War Reconstruction for Finnmark and North-Troms, and are a gift from the evacuation committee to the museum. In cooperation with the Henie Onstad Art Centre, the committee extracted these photographs from the Centre’s library of Kåre Kivijärvi’s works. The photographs have never before been reproduced and are thus regarded as cultural history material rather than art.

  

  

  

  
  12. April 2016

  •

  •

• Chechen Women – Magnum in Motion

  In August 1999, Françoise Spiekermeier went to Chechnya to report for the magazine Paris Match, dressed as a local woman to hide her identity as a foreign journalist. She returned to Paris with portraits of Chechen women who tried to live their lives resisting the Russian pressure by any means. Each one in her own way.

  ”What they all have in common”, says Françoise, “is their dignity and a will, always, to remain beautiful in facing adversity. A good make-up becomes the best war painting, a protective camouflage as well as a provocative message to the enemy”.

  In 2003, Françoise Spiekermeier, impressed by the personality of the Chechen journalist Tamara and her devotion to the Chechen people, proposed to film her and her work. From 1999 until the end of the second war in 2006, day after day, night and day, risking her life, Tamara records, photographs and videotapes crimes and abductions perpetrated by the Russian army on civilians. The documentary Tamara’s Eyes (18 min.) was shown on a French magazine « 7 à 8 » on the TV channel TF1, and in several Human Rights Film Festivals in Europe.

  ”Each of these pictures tell a story about pain, grief, fear and death” points the experienced BBC reporter Robin Lustig out in the Magnum Group’s presentation of images from major world events in the last 60 years, Covering Conflict. ”But there are a handful that tell another story, about hope, strength and courage”, he soon adds. They simply show us who we are and what we are capable of. They make us think about the world we live in and that all conflicts are about individuals. This is, to his opinion, what journalism should be about.

  Some of these images reflect war and confrontations that we must never forget. And some of them are actually very beautiful. Do we belittle the reality by admiring the aesthetics?

  In December 2001, Thomas Dworzak arrived in Kandahar, the former heart of the Taliban. Across from his hotel portrait studios were re-opening, after having been closed by the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. They had been allowed to work partly when the Taliban realized photographs would be needed for forms of identification. When members of the Taliban came for the required identification pictures, they also posed for a more flattering portrait. The Taliban members were unable to return for their portraits since they had been forced to flee the advancing opposition. These images were taken clandestinely in the back rooms of the studio. The studio photographers gladly sold these images to Thomas.

  On April 3, 2002, the Israeli Defence Forces had launched a similar assault on Jenin refugee camp, home of some 14,000 Palestinians. At least fifty-two Palestinians were killed and more than a quarter of the camp’s population was left homeless. Larry Towell photographed the aftermath.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
  8. April 2016

  •

  •