Week 48 - 2015
Tom Sandberg, Untitled, 1984. Silver gelatine on barytha. Preus museum's collection.
Master of dark and light
Tom Sandberg (1953-2014) is considered one of Norway's foremost practitioners of the lens-based arts in recent times. We can recognize Sandberg's photographs throughout all of his production. They are marked by a sense of wonder, searching, and intimacy. The most striking change was in the evolution of his formats and a movement from a wholly dark to an entirely light-filled mode of expression.
Tom Sandberg's photographs study more than form and space. Although the motifs are fluttering curtains, puddles, or architechtonic details, the images carry an intensity that leads viewers to feel that the photographs deal with something existential. Through his characteristic practice of titling his pictures "Without Title," he gives us no convenient hanger or hook, but challenges us to read the images ourselves from our own points of view.
You can see several of Sandberg's photographs, from those that are dark to ones filled with light, on the Wall of Fame at the Preus Museum through January 2016.