Status: Archived

• Deep in the Westfjords of Iceland

  The Icelandic photographers Ragnar Axelsson and Thorvaldur Kristmundsson share a deep fascination for people and communities in remote and extreme places in the North. They both witness the rapid decline of traditional ways of living in the Arctic due to modernisation and global warming.

  Ragnar Axelsson has been travelling the Arctic for almost three decades motivated by respect for the hunting communities of northern Greenland and Canada. The northernmost Inuit communities in the world are located in the northwestern part of Greenland. The Inuit culture and their system of beliefs can be seen as a consequence of a unique adaption to the harsh realities of the arctic nature. In the exhibition “Last Days of the Arctic”, Axelsson brings us into close encounters with the Inuit way of living and their environment. His camera captures a vulnerable culture facing both dramatic social and climatic challenges.

  Thorvaldur Örn Kristmundsson has for a period of six years visited “Isafjardardjup” and the deep fjords in the northwestern region of Iceland. The area is isolated and unspoilt and spectacular in its grandeur. Nevertheless, some fishermen and farmers still cling to the traditional way of life rooted in the oldest settlement in the country. Gradually, this remote cultural landscape is transformed. Traditional lifeforms crumble under the pressure of modernisation and climate changes. Kristmundsson´s camera captures the organic relationship between humans and nature as well as the loss of know-how and the passing away of traditional culture.

  Not only have I travelled to countries suffering war, followed major sport events, met kings and queens, world leaders and musicians, but also realised that it takes no more than the story of a simple life of one person to make it greater than the everyday headlines of world events.

  Thorvaldur Kristmundsson

  

  

  
  6. April 2016

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• Last Days of The Arctic

  Ragnar Axelsson has been travelling the Arctic for almost three decades motivated by respect for the hunting communities of northern Greenland and Canada. The northernmost Inuit communities in the world are located in the northwestern part of Greenland.

  The Inuit culture and their system of beliefs can be seen as a consequence of a unique adaption to the harsh realities of the arctic nature. In the exhibition “Last Days of the Arctic”, Axelsson brings us into close encounters with the Inuit way of living and their environment. His camera captures a vulnerable culture facing both dramatic social and climatic challenges.

  Photographing in Greenland has captured my heart. I have lived with hunters on the edge of polar extremes. I hope the Arctic will survive.

  Ragnar Axelsson

  Thorvaldur Kristmundsson has for a period of six years visited “Isafjardardjup” and the deep fjords in the northwestern region of Iceland. The area is isolated and unspoilt and spectacular in its grandeur. Nevertheless, some fishermen and farmers still cling to the traditional way of life rooted in the oldest settlement in the country. Gradually, this remote cultural landscape is transformed. Traditional lifeforms crumble under the pressure of modernisation and climate changes. Kristmundsson´s camera captures the organic relationship between humans and nature as well as the loss of know-how and the passing away of traditional culture.

  The ice that once stretched far into the horizon is now open sea. The number of hunters decreases every year and it is becoming increasingly hard to survive by hunting alone. One envisions the end of a society based on a thousand-year-old hunting tradition.

  Ragnar Axelsson

  

  

  

  
  6. April 2016

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• Imaginary Homecoming

  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.

  A landscape is speechless. Day by day, its only idiom is the sensory experience afforded by the biological reality, the weather conditions, and the actions that take place in the environment.
  
  However, we can also assume that a landscape has another dimension: the potential but invisible field of possibilities nourished by everyday perceptions, lived experiences, different histories, narratives and fantasies.
  In fact, any understanding of landscape entails a succession of distinct moments and different points of view. The layeredness of landscape, in other words, forms part of our own projection. Every landscape is also a mental landscape.

  Jorma Puranen, Foreword, Imaginary Homecoming (Oulu, Finland: Pohjoinen, 1999).

  During a visit to the Finnish Sámi region, Puranen was shown a series of unusually beautiful portrait photographs in monochrome originally used in a book project by Nils-Aslak Valkepää. He was informed that they were from a photograph library at the Musée de L’Homme in Paris. Puranen visited the library and found a number of photographs, mainly portrait studies, taken in 1884 during Prince Roland Bonaparte’s expedition to the Sámi regions in the north. The images were taken by a French photographer by the name of G. Roche. Puranen photographed a selection of the portraits and mounted them on acrylic plates. He took them back to the landscape in which they were originally taken and arranged them as installations he photographed. The installations may be perceived as an attempt to relocate cultural elements from the past back to the present, and a transgression of time and space. The project was also presented in book form.

  The art works and photographs in the exhibition are on loan direct from the photographer, and the museum is currently trying to persuade Puranen to visit Tromsø in person.

  

  

  

  

  

  
  5. April 2016

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• The Roma Journeys

  Between 2000 and 2006, the photographer Joakim Eskildsen and the author Cia Rinne went on a documentary journey in seven countries, to gain insight to the life of the Roma. Through serendipity and the assistance of helpful companions, they were able to immerse themselves into the Roma way of life.

  The Roma opened their homes and welcomed them open-heartedly and without prejudice. As their affinity for these families grew over time, so did their sympathy and interest in this suppressed ethnic group. The Roma Journeys became an intimate and personal rendering of the Roma people of Hungary, Romania, India, Finland, Greece, Russia, and France.

  This exhibition is a multidimensional and exceptional portrait of a poor and hardworking people, with irrepressible vitality and strong family ties and explosive creativity expressed through music, colors, and festivities. The Danish-born photographer approaches this unknown world with an open mind and empathy. In “The Roma Journeys” Joakim Eskildsen and Cia Rinne step forward and speak up for the Roma people.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
  5. April 2016

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• Pleine Mer

  Perspektivet Museum is confirming its role as a centre of showing documentary photos in Northern Norway. We now have established an exciting collaboration with Magnum Photos in Paris, and will be able to display some of the best photographers in the world here in Tromsø. At the time being we are proud to invite our visitors to the exhibition ”Pleine Mer” by the French Magnum photographer Jean Gaumy.

  The exhibition lasts from 28th of April until 6th of January 2008. Born in south-western France, Jean Gaumy worked as an editor and photographer on a regional daily while finishing his university studies in literature in Rouen in 1969–72. He submitted his first photographs to the Viva agency in 1969, going on to join Gamma in 1973 and Magnum in 1977.

  I want to go to sea and this urge already contains the germ of the idea. It can’t be to do with a reportage. It’s something else. I don’t know what exactly. I’ll have to tell a story. Tell it simply. Avoid pretence, the heroic tone. Stay at the human level.

  Excerpt from Jean Gaumy’s notebooks (Men at Sea, Harry N. Abrams, 2002, this translation by John Tittensor)

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
  5. April 2016

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• Bureaucratics

  In 2003, the Dutch photographer Jan Banning was hired to take photographs to illustrate a magazine article about Dutch aid to a Mozambique project to reform governmental administration. This task was no easy feat – how do you inject colour and life into such a seemingly dull topic?

  His photographs received rave reviews. Encouraged, Banning, along with writer Will Tinnemans, continued to photograph civil servants around the world – from small town clerks to police authorities and governors. They always retained the perspective of the visitor, including the desk as a symbol of status and power. This approach illustrates the universal characteristics of bureaucracy across the globe, despite vast political and cultural differences.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Between 2003 and 2007, Banning and Tinnemans visited hundreds of civil servants on various rungs of the hierarchical ladder in eight countries. Considering that their list includes countries like India, Yemen, Bolivia, China, and others, just obtaining the necessary permits is quite an achievement. In their efforts to reveal the true face of bureaucracy, they personally had to overcome many of bureaucracy’s obstacles.

  This exhibition includes the best portraits from a total of 250, as well as information on the country in question and the civil servant in each photograph. The square format is thought to mirror the rigid rules and lack of dynamics in the square bureaucracy. This is perhaps the aspect that feels most familiar to us. The most striking feature, however, is how the different interiors of the offices reflect the political systems of each country, as well as the values and personality of the individual civil servant, if he or she has been permitted to display any personal preference.

  The exhibition is supported by The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Oslo.

  5. April 2016

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• Anna Amerikan Mummu

  Nina Korhonens exhibition is a story about her grandmother Anna who alone emigrated to U.S.A in 1959. She was 40 years old, had just lost her job, and it was bad times in Finland. It was now time to make real the childhood dream of the ”Wonderland” America.

  More than 30 years later the photographer follows her grandmothers everydaylife during a period of seven years. The photographs are close to everydaylife, sensual and warm- with lot of humour. The exhibition is a tribute to an elderly woman who seeked a different life and found it. Anna got 40 years in America before she died. The book Anna, Amerikan mummu won the prize ”The Best Photobook 2004” in Sweden.

  Later in life Anna remembered with enthusiasm the decisive moment when her husband Kalle exclamed ” My darling love, now it is your turn to experience the world!” The journey to America had been Anna´s big dream since she was eight years old and promised to follow her aunt to the great”Wonderland”. It wasn´t to be that time, but the dream had been planted in fertile soil, to awaken several decades later in full bloom when Anna was informed that she was too old to continue working in the textile factory. Anna was 40 years then and it was a bad time in Finland and impossible to find a new job.

  My darling love, now it is your turn to experience the world!

  Kalle for his part had travelled as the chief engineer to all the great ports of the world. The seafarer now thought that it was his turn to step ashore and stay at home.” That I actually made it to America”, Anna was careful to say later, ”was a gift from Kalle”.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  In spring 1959 Anna realised her life´s dream and alone, with a couple of hundred dollars and no special skills in the English language, she took the airplane to New York. Anna got a job as a cook in a wealthy American family in upper Manhattan and was taken in as a working member of the family. Anna loved New York and with her savings that had grown year by year she bought a three room apartment by Sunset Park in Brooklyn. It was here in Finntown, Brooklyn Anna lived with other Finnish emigrants.

  Anna flew to Tampere, Finland, every summer and Kalle flew to her in New York every winter. In between times, they wrote to each other and kept their love alive, for ”love has no borders” as Anna clearly declared to all curious family members.

  5. April 2016

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• Places We Live

  Over a billion people – a sixth of the world’s population – currently live in slums. Worldwide urbanization and mass poverty have led to many people living a marginalized existence outside the official city limits.

  Monotonous language is often used to depict slum life, with poverty, crime, want and misery predominating. In Places We Live Jonas Bendiksen puts himself at the centre of the home, amongst the creative décor, small ornaments and souvenirs, and asks the slum dwellers to recount their lives.

  The overriding narrative is that of the human capacity to establish a normal life and create a home. Huge variations in the circumstances of individuals and personal style are unveiled, and our understanding of how we live in the twenty-first century is challenged.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
  5. April 2016

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• Satellites

  For five years before 2005 Jonas Bendiksen spent a great deal of his time exploring the periphery of the former Soviet Union, traveling in isolated territories coloured by unrest and restructuring problems following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. There was little Moscow could do to hinder the emergence of fifteen autonomous states. But the transition to a new social order was far from easy.

  In Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the eastern part of Serbia Bendiksen found outposts where people had to redefine themselves in relation to a new historical, religious and ideological reality. Mixed results have ensued; bloody internal conflicts, isolated pariah states, self-constructed versions of capitalism and depopulation.

  The Satellites exhibition recounts stories from six places which existed under the world’s radar, but which together represent unfinished chapters in the history of the Soviet Union.

  

  

  
  5. April 2016

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• Love Me

  Love Me explores the insidious power of the global beauty industry and our collective insecurity, vanity and fear of ageing. Over a period of five years Zed Nelson visited eighteen countries across five continents, photographing cosmetic surgeons, beauty queens, soldiers and bodybuilders alongside everyday teenagers, housewives and businessmen.

  Love Me reflects on both the cultural and commercial forces that drive a global obsession with youth and beauty. The project explores how a new form of globalization is taking place, where an increasingly narrow Western beauty ideal is being exported around the world like a crude universal brand. In a series of compelling images, Love Me negotiates the boundaries of art and documentary, reflecting a world we have created in which there are enormous social, psychological and economic rewards and penalties attached to the way we look.

  Love Me represent a powerful body of work that forces every one of us to question our own place in a culture that compels us to constantly judge, and be judged, by our appearance.

  An Impressions Gallery Touring Exhibition

  More images from the exhibition

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
  5. April 2016

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