Bending the Frame

The exhibition Bending the Frame is based on the book of the same name written by the New York-based professor of media, Fred Ritchin. The idea here is to present other forms of visual storytelling than those we usually find in conventional press photography and news media, particularly images which represent a critical voice in the public debate.

Susan Meiselas og Tina Enghoff på Preus museum (foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

At the same time, the exhibition examines new strategies in documentary, journalistic and artistic photography, and creates overlaps between otherwise separate photographic genres. The exhibition shows contemporary image-based work, movies, books and Internet projects.

©Celia A. Shapiro: "John Rook – 09/19/1986" from the series Last Suppers (1999-2001)

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Last Suppers re-creates a number of condemned prisoners' last meals before their executions, drawing attention to the their personalities, social backgrounds, and the violence of institutionalized killing. The text for Shapiro’s photo-essay published in 2004 began: “When Arkansas executed Rickey Ray Rector back when Bill Clinton was governor, the mentally impaired inmate famously set aside half of his last meal—a pecan pie—for after the execution.”

Bending the Frame is not an art exhibition in the traditional sense. It should be considered more of an innovative archive of contemporary history, a meeting place between different visual representations of real life events, functioning as a platform for discussion and productive exchange of opinions.

The exhibition is curated by Fred Ritchin and photographer Tina Enghoff in collaboration with Fotografisk Center in Copenhagen and Preus Museum.

©Annika Von Hauswolff, An Oral Story of Economic Structures, (2012). Courtesy Hasselblad Foundation

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Hauswolffs photographs of gold teeth revolve around the absurdity that something as intimate as a person's dentures are made into economic objects. Her work raises the question of our humanity in relationship to intimate objects from other persons’ lives.

The poster exhibition #WomenMatter by #Dysturb, pasted on the streets of Horten, is also part of Bending the Frame. 

Read about the works in the exhibition

Find a list below of artists contributing to the exhibition.
Clicking the names will take you directly to a short presentaion of each project.

Adam Broomberg (ZA) & Oliver Chanarin (UK)
Iconic images from Preus museum's collection
Gideon Mendel (ZA)
The workshopen TIME from Berg prison
Tina Enghoff (DK)
Susan Meiselas (US)
Line Anda Dalmar (NO)
Matt Black (US)
Sumeja Tulic (BO)
Lina Hashim (DK)
Yale University (US)
Fred Ritchin (US)
Monica Haller (US)
Chris Jordan (US)
Nick Brandt (UK)
Jennifer Karady (US)
Tamms Year Ten & Laurie Jo Reynolds (US)
Lewis W. Hine (US)
Celia A Shapiro (US)
Annika Von Hauswolff (SE)
Tanya Habjouqa (JO)
Rabih Mroué (LIB)
Kent Klich (SE)
Jacob A. Riis (DK/US)
Charlotte Haslund-Christensen (DK)
Zanele Muholi (ZA)
Gustavo Germano (AR)
#Dysturb (FR)
Students (NO/SE)

Filmprogram
Webprogram

Adam Broomberg (ZA) & Oliver Chanarin (UK)

Adam Broomberg (ZA) & Oliver Chanarin (UK), Repatriation II, fra serien The Day Nobody Died, (2008) C-print på aluminium
Tilhører: Lisson Gallery

(Foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Merging photojournalism and visual arts, artist duo Broomberg and Chanarin present photographic series from moments of historical import yet refuse to assign the images unambiguous intent. In The Day Nobody Died the pair captured the daily life of the British army in Afghanistan, exposing photographic paper to light during significant events, creating abstract works that challenge journalism's traditional role in documenting war.

Documentation on how the image was made

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Iconic Images from Preus museum’s collection

Ikoniske bilder (foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Icon is Greek for "image". In the orthodox church the word was early used as an image that represented Jesus, Maria or the Apostles. Today we use the word for a particular image. An image so catching that we always will remember it, and therefor is so connected to a special incident that it can represent the incident.

You'll find these images on the wall:  

David Lagerlöf - Nazistdemonstrasjon Borlänge, Sverige (2016), inkjet print, NTB Scanpix
Jeff Widener - Tank Man (1989), inkjet print, inkjet print, AP
Joe Rosenthal - Flag Raising on Iwo Jima (1945), inkjet print, AP
John Dominis - Black Power Salute (1968), inkjet print, AP
Jonathan Bachman - Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge (2016), inkjet print, Reuters
Josef Koudelka - Invasion of Prague (1968), inkjet print, Magnum
Kristoffer Øverli Andersen - Terror Rammer Norge (2011), inkjet print, NTB Scanpix
Malcolm Browne - The Burning Monk (1963), inkjet print, AP
Nick Ut - The Terror of War (1972), inkjet print, AP
NTB arkivfoto / Scanpix - Frigjøringen (1945), inkjet print, NTB Scanpix
Pete Souza - The Situation Room (2011), inkjet print, Reuters
Robert Capa - The Falling Soldier (1936), inkjet print, Magnum
Sergant Ivan Frederick - The Hooded Man (2003), inkjet print, AP
Seth Mcallister - September 11, 2001 (2001), inkjet print, AFP
United Press International - Rosa Parks in Montgomery Bus (1956), inkjet print, United Press International / The Granger Collection
Yevgeny Khaldei - Raising a Flag Over the Reichstag (1945), inkjet print, Heritage
Johannes Stage - Hjemmestyrkene overtar Akershus festning. 11. mai 1945 (1945), fotografi/sølvgelatin
Fotograf: NASA, Eier: Kennedy Space Center - Blue Marbel, Earth as seen from outer space (1972), c-print
Ditri Baltermants - Grief (1941), fotografi/sølvgelatin, giver/siste eier: Per Torgersen
William Mikkelsen - Willy Brandt ved Brandenburger Tor, 12. November 1989 (1989), c-print, selger til museet: William Mikkelsen
Nilufer Demir  - Aylan Shenu/Kurdi (2015), inkjet print, NTB Scanpix
Jan Greve - Kong Olav på trikken. Holmenkollbanen, 1973 (1973), inkjet print, NTB Scanpix

Would you like to see more iconic images, and read about them? This is Time's list of the 100 most influental images of all time.

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Gideon Mendel (ZA)

The Story of Nomphilo Mazuza (2004 – 2007) fra serien We Are Living Here (1980-) Fotografi på Epson BarytaTilhører: kunstneren(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

This is the story of Nomphilo Mazuza. She began antiretroviral treatment when she was close to death and her body was heavily emaciated in a manner typical of the final stages of AIDS. Gideon Mendel’s project We are Living Here is a long-term project about the effectiveness of HIV treatment in South Africa. The aim of the project was to explore, at a very personal level, the meaning of access to treatment through its impact over time on Lusisiki`s inhabitants in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.

Mendel’s documentation of the effectiveness of HIV treatments in South Africa, including the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs, has been crucial for Western support of such projects. Annemarie Hou, director of communications at UNAIDS, commented on the impact of Mendel’s work: “I think it would not be too bold to say his work helped us reach 8 million people on treatment today.”

Read more about the project

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The workshop TID (TIME) from Søndre Vestfold prison, department Berg

Utført av Kamille Nygård og Tina Enghoff i samarbeid med 8 innsatte fra Berg fengsel, 2017.
Collage av fotografi og tekst
(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Led by Kamille Nygård and Tina Enghoff (DK) in collaboration with Preus museum
Collage of photographs and text

The photography and text workshop TID (TIME) in its first edition culminates in an exhibition of photographs taken by and texts written by inmates at Berg prison. It gives an outstanding insight into a prison reality that few people know. The philosophical core of the project was based around the term time and the principal point of the project was to give vision and speech back to a group of people who are subject to the judgement and the eyes of others. In a prison, being in possession of a camera (i.e. a gaze that can document) under normal circumstances is completely unheard of. However, thanks to an extraordinary cooperation with the prison management, a 5-day exception was granted.

"Time is what is not to be reflected upon"

The project progressed as a photography workshop where the 8 men who participated through educational modules and talks with photographer Tina Enghoff and prison priest Kamille Nygård were put to work. In the first module the prisoners took pictures of the timespan of a day, what they did, looked at, and if possible, what they thought about. Then they took pictures of their room, how they have adapted or not in time and space. And finally, they took a self-portrait that should tell something about who they are, but where one cannot see their face.

For the pictures were urged to write down their thoughts about the meaning of the different motifs. On the first day, one of the inmates said; time is what is not to be reflected upon. However, through taking the pictures and writing, it came to light how the eight men handle in very different ways, how it feels like to exist in time - a time one could say is taken from them. The work also tells a story about how they with small simple techniques manage to protect what's important to them in a pretty harsh environment. The work around time inevitably dealt with their sentence and punishment as well as their relationship with their family and finally, their sense of self.

Their own project

During the five days the project more and more became the inmates' own project. As a message to the world, the images and texts express not only frustration, hopelessness and a deep sense of being people who have been erased from society but also hope – a hope that the world can still be reached.

During the evaluation of the project on the last day one of the inmates said: It's as if we’ve gotten a face.

The workshop and exhibition stand as a strong testimony from the 8 inmates. And as such, it is an important contribution and a new perspective in a larger debate regarding punishment and prisons.

The somewhat unusual cooperation between a prison, Søndre Berg, and a photo museum (Preu Museum), shows us how art can engage both socially and politically, and thus bring new dimensions to what it means to work with people – in this instance, inmates in a prison.

Get to know Berg prison

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Tina Enghoff (DK)

Tina Enghoff, Had Er og Isolation, Artist Books og fotografier.

(foto: Andreas Hervik/Preus museum)

The two books Had Er and Isolation focus on the growing conformance of the Danish society. In Isolation, the focus is on how the state punishes using solitary confinement in its prison system, while in Had Er, Enghoff has photographed places where hate crimes have been committed. The two books are connected in a dialogue with each other and in many ways, they reflect the time we live in. Europe today divides the world into "us" and "them".

Solidarity is being replaced with nationalism. It is questioned whether refugees' have a right to seek asylum - solely to save the national state and the privileges of individual's. Paradoxically, we are living in an increasingly globalized world. Today the national state and unity must be preserved, which means that "the others" in society are looked upon as a threat. This threat is by individuals met with hatred and by the state with power and segregation through isolation.

Dare not to sleep

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Susan Meiselas (US)

Susan Meiselas, Reframing History (2004).

(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Susan Meiselas has reworked and further contextualized her photographs from the revolution in Nicaragua several times. On the 25th anniversary of the Nicaraguan revolution, she returned to Nicaragua to collaborate with local communities to create sites for collective memory. This resulted in the project, Reframing History, where she placed mural-sized photographs on public walls and in open spaces in the towns at the sites where the photographs were originally made. The ambition behind the project was to help the new generation whom had never experienced the war understand their history.

Pictures:
Wall graffiti on Somoza supporters house burned in Monimbo, asking ”Where is Norma Gonzalez? The dictatorship must answer, 1978, from the series Reframing History, 2004, Chromogenic print

Fleeing the bombing to seek refuge outside of Estelí, Nicaragua, 1978, from the series Reframing History, 2004, Chromogenic print

Muchacho withdrawing from commercial district of Masaya after three days of bombing, 1978, from the series Reframing History, 2004, Chromogenic print

“Cuesto del Plomo,” hillside outside of Managua, a well-known site of many assassinations carried out by the National Guard. People searched daily here for missing persons, 1978, from the series Reframing History, 2004, Chromogenic print

Read more about the project

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Line Anda Dalmar (NO)

©Line Anda Dalmar, Building Mountains, (2015)
Photo: Line Anda Dalmar

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Building Mountains can be seen as a depiction of certain consequences of climate change. In the course of a week Dalmar dug up over a ton of earth from a lake and built mountains of it. At high tide they were flooded, and she had to build them up again.

Building Mountains can be seen as a depiction of certain consequences of climate change. In the course of a week Dalmar dug up over a ton of clay from a fjord and built mountains of it during the Land Art Biennale at Kjerringøy in Norway. At high tide the mountains were flooded, and she had to rebuild them the next day.

building mountains from lineandadalmar on Vimeo.

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Matt Black (US)

Matt Black, The Geography of Poverty (2015-). Innkjøpt av Preus museum

(Foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

For his ongoing project The Geography of Poverty, Matt Black has traveled 48,000 miles across 44 US states, photographing designated “poverty areas,” communities whose poverty rates are in excess of 20%, and highlighting the country’s growing gap between rich and poor.

According to the Census Bureau’s measure of poverty $11,490 annual income for one person or $23,550 for a family of four over 43 million people qualify as poor in the US. At the same time, the share of income going to the top one percent of the population has more than doubled since the 1970s. At the very top, the richest 0.1 percent’s share of the national wealth has tripled.

The Geography of Poverty gives its focus to America’s most marginalized communities, from the deserts of the Southwest through the Black Belt in the South, to the post-industrial, former factory towns running Midwest and Northeast. From farm towns in Central California and ranching communities in Oregon, to the political convention cities of Cleveland and Philadelphia.

The photographs in the project take the temperature of the American Dream during a time of deepening division.

The Geography of Poverty

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Sumeja Tulic (BO)

Sumeja Tulic (BO), Travel Guide for Mama (2014), Bok 

(Foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Visiting New York for the first time as a Human Rights Fellow at Magnum, Sumeja Tulic developed a conceptual travel guide with advice, safety tips, and insights from interviews with dozens of women. It describes their daily experiences and encounters with discrimination while wearing hijab in New York. Tulic originally made this travel for her mother, who started wearing a hijab 25 years ago. It is serious but also full of humor and its message about how to deal with alienation and discrimination is one that should be important to us all.

Flip throug the book Travel Guide for Mama

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Lina Hashim (DK)

Lina Hashim, No Wind - With Hijab (2013). Fotografi. Tilhører kunstneren

(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Lina Hashim was born in Kuwait, but raised in Denmark. When her mother left the house, she was wearing a scarf so that only a single lock of hair was visible. Yet she had an appointment with the hairdresser every Friday. Outside she was covered by the hijab to protect against the gaze of men, but behind the fabric barrier thrived femininity, vanity and her individuality. Hashim’s pictures give us a glance at the hair of women whom we would otherwise never see, but, they do so in dialogue with rules and regulations set by imams.

The resulting images are pictures of hair with no identifying features visible. It’s a curious irony to see the hair shown without either the headscarf or face visible. It is a recognition of an identity that is hidden, which is simultaneously stripped of identity yet again. It’s this kind of irony that lies at the center of Hashim’s work and gives it a multilayered feel that is hard to pin down.

Interview with Lina Hashim:

Lina Hashim: Hunting for truth from Buhl Worx on Vimeo.

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Yale University (US)

Installasjonsvisning av Cambodian Genocide Program (2010), digitalt arkiv

(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

The Cambodian Genocide Program is a research project at Yale University which has obtained and scanned photographic images pertaining to various aspects of gross human rights violations under the Red Khmer regime. The images in the almost never-ending slideshow was used to create a searchable archive of victims. All the victims were photographed as they were entered the Tuol Sleng prison before being executed. The photographs from the research project has later been used as evidence in human rights prosecutions.

Take me to the slideshow

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Fred Ritchin (US)

Fred Ritchin, 4 Corners Project (2004-). Online platform

(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

The Four Corners Project aims to increase the authorship and authority of the photographer by providing a template to add context to each of the four corners of the photograph. By rolling over on each of the corners with the cursor, the interested reader is available to find out more about what is referenced by the photograph—the Backstory (context provided by the photographer, the subject, a witness, etc.), the Image Context (photographs made before and after, a video of the scene, a comparative image, etc.), Links (clickable articles, videos, maps, etc., that add more information), and the Caption/Credit/Code of Ethics (the photographer’s own caption, credit, copyright, and code of ethics). There will also be provisions made for the reader to potentially add insights and ideas as part of a conversation that emerges around the photograph, and even other images, through a wiki-like addendum.

Hør Ritchin presentere prosjektet:

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Monica Haller (US)

Monica Haller, Veterans Book Project (2009 – 2014), Bøker. Tilhører: Preus museum

(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

The Veterans Book Project is a library of books authored collaboratively by artist Monica Haller and dozens of people who have been affected by, and have archives of, the current American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In their printed format, the books function as a “container” that slows down, materializes and reflects upon the great quantity of ephemeral image files that live on veterans’ hard drives.

See more, download orbuy books from the project

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Chris Jordan (US)

Chris Jordan, Midway: Message from the Gyre (2009-), Fotografier.

(Foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Midway: Message from the Gyre is a series of photographs depicting rotting carcasses of baby albatrosses filled with plastic. The birds nest on Midway Atoll, one of the remotest islands on Earth, and are being fed plastic by their parents, who find floating plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and mistake it for food. The photographs are a part of an ongoing arts and media project called Midway Journey which has also resulted in a film titled Albatross - a love story for our time from the heart of the Pacific. Hauntingly beautiful and horrific at the same time the images tell us just how shockingly far our pollution of the planet has gone.

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MIDWAY a Message from the Gyre : a short film by Chris Jordan from Midway on Vimeo.

Chris Jordan (US)

Camel Gastrolith (2016), Video

Camel Gastrolith is a bizarre corollary to Midway, from halfway around the globe in the Arabian Desert. Chris Jordan was mailed this surreal mass of more than 500 plastic bags and other shards of plastic, metal, and glass, from a veterinary researcher in Dubai who studies the stomach contents of dead camels found in the desert. The results of plastic pollution, and what it mirrors back to us about the insanity of our disposable culture is important to understand. Equally important is also the life of this camel, one innocent creature, who, like the albatross, cannot know what we know.

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Nick Brandt (UK)

Nick Brandt, Underpass With Elephants (Lean back, your life is on track), 2015
Tilhører: Møllersamlingen, Oslo (foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

In the apocalyptic photo series Inherit the Dust, Nick Brandt takes life-size images of animals and places them in the African locations where they used to roam only a few years ago. The images serve as a testimony about how rapidly we destroy our planet and how animals become extinct at a rapidly increasing rate. In Brandt’s own words the pictures are a reminder that ‘If we fail to act, future generations will be inheriting the sad remnants of a once-vibrant living planet. They will be inheriting dust!’

INHERIT THE DUST : The Concept, by NICK BRANDT from Nick Brandt Photography on Vimeo.

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Jennifer Karady (US)

Jennifer Karady, Soldiers’ Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan, 2006-
C-print, Fujiflex på plexi. Tilhører kunstneren.
(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Jennifer Karady’s project Soldier Stories gives us insight in the individual traumas suffered by war veterans. Karady works with each returning soldier for about a month, making visible to their families, friends, and the rest of us, the traumas that remain. The process becomes therapeutic for the participants but also carries a potent critical edge towards war faring societies. The question raised in Karady’s work is one that resonates with us all. Who wins and who loses a war?

Se flere Soldier's Stories

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Tamms Year Ten & Laurie Jo Reynolds (US)

Tamms Year Ten & Laurie Jo Reynolds, Photo Requests from Solitary, 2009-2012. Fotografi på inkjet papir
Tilhører: Fotografene som har bidratt til prosjektet

(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

In collaboration with the group Tamms Year Ten, Laurie Jo Reynolds coordinated an effort to have photographs made of the outside world according to the wishes of prisoners held in solitary confinement. The photographs have been used as part of a larger campaign for more humane prison conditions and in January 2013 the Tamms Supermaximum Security Prison in Illinois was closed.

Read more about the project

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Lewis W. Hine (US)

Lewis W. Hine, Fra serien laget for National Child Labor Committee
"Avisgutten Tony Casale med kallenavnet "Bologna". Han har ifølge sin sjef vist merker på armen etter at faren har bitt ham fordi han ikke har solgt nok aviser. Hartford, Connecticut, USA. mars 1909."

From the series made for the National Child Labor Committee

Lewis W. Hine, originally educated to be a teacher, was introduced to photography early in his career as an aid for teaching purposes. He quickly discovered that the pictures he took had the potential to educate far beyond the walls of the classroom. In 1908 he left his teacher's job to work full time as a photographer and field worker for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Together with the NCLC, Hine worked to put the working conditions of millions of American children on the political agenda. The aim was to ratify a new bill that ensured children against being taken advantage of by their employers.

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Celia A. Shapiro (US) 

Celia A Shapiro, The Last Supper, 1999-2001.
Tilhører: kunstneren
(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

The Last Supper series presents photographs of re-created requested last meals of executed prisoners. The process of composing the pictures became a profound meditation on violence and how the state metes out justice and retribution. The meal is life given to the body, the execution is life taken from the body. The meals register the juxtaposition between/confusion over what is given and what is taken away.

Read more about the project

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Annika Von Hauswolff (SE)

©Annika Von Hauswolff, An Oral Story of Economic Structures, (2012). Courtesy Hasselblad Foundation

Show extended caption

Hauswolffs photographs of gold teeth revolve around the absurdity that something as intimate as a person's dentures are made into economic objects. Her work raises the question of our humanity in relationship to intimate objects from other persons’ lives.

Hauswolff’s photographs depict dental implants once situated in the mouth of strangers. The small nuggets of gold are now commodified as objects of value bought online, but is further commodified by the Hauswolff who transforms them into works of art. Using Still Life as a context for the highly personal objects, they become reflections upon notions of financial despair, the commodification of basic needs and the everlasting metamorphosis of gold. 

Buy gold teeth?

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Tanya Habjouqa (JO)

Tanya Habjouqa, Occupied Pleasures, 2012-2013.
(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)
Annika Von HAusswulffs prosjekt An Oral Story of Economic Structures ses i bakgrunnen.

Occupied Pleasures presents a nuanced, multi-dimensional portrayal of humanity’s ability to find pleasure in the face of trying circumstances in Occupied West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza. Occupied Pleasures straddles passive and active meanings: to be occupied under Israel, and to occupy oneself, joyfully and defiantly, in pastime and simple pleasures. 

More than four million Palestinians live in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, where the political situation regularly intrudes upon the most mundane of moments. Movement is circumscribed and threat of violence often hangs overhead. This creates the strongest of desires for the smallest of pleasures, and a sharp sense of humour about the absurdities that a 47-year occupation has produced.

Interview with Tanya Habjouqa

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Rabih Mroué (LIB)

Rabih Mroué, I was fortunate not to have seen what the other have witnessed, 5 Black Boxes, No. III, V, XII, XIII, XIV (2006-2016)
Collage på papir, LED-lys, lyd, hodetelefoner, bokser av tre, 34 x 34 x 22 cm hver
Tilhører: kunstneren og Sfeir-Semler Gallery / Beirut

(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Rabih Mroué, I was fortunate not to have seen what the other have witnessed, 5 Black Boxes, No. III, V, XII, XIII, XIV (2006-2016)
Collage på papir, LED-lys, lyd, hodetelefoner, bokser av tre, 34 x 34 x 22 cm hver
Tilhører: kunstneren og Sfeir-Semler Gallery / Beirut

(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

The 5 Black Boxes is part of a series that relentlessly repeats the world's conflicts. Each black box contains a small collage that we must bend our head to see. Attached to each box is a set of headphones that plays extracts from radio clips, news or music. In this way we are drawn into a universe that reminds us of a movie. The title reminds us of the black box rescue crews look for after flight disasters - the ones who tell us what happened the minutes before the crash. Mroué seems to say: The world goes on despite the disasters, but we never learn.

More about the project

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Kent Klich (SE)

Kent Klich, Picture Imperfect, 1983-. Fotografi, video, brev og kvitteringer. Tilhører kunstneren. (Charlotte Haslund-Christensens prosjekt WHO'S NEXT i monteret i forgrunnen).
(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Picture Imperfect is based on a long-term friendship and collaboration between the photographer Kent Klich and Beth, a former drug addict and prostitute. Klich has photographed Beth for more than thirty years and has gotten exceptionally close to her. Today Beth is on methadone and lives together with her husband Kim whom she has been married to for 20 years. The film Beth’s Diary is a short documentary by Beth about her own life.

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Jacob A. Riis (DK/US)

Jacob Riis, Bandit's Roost, Lower East Side, New York, 1887. Tilhører Preus museums samlinger

From the series "How the Other Half Lives" and "Children of the Poor"
Courtesy of Preus museum

Riis left Denmark in the great flow of emigrants from Europe to the United States. From 1870 to 1900 about twelve million immigrants came to the United States and 70% were locked in via New York. The period was characterized by poverty, immigration, industrialization and an explosive population growth. Later, through his work as a crime reporter in the New York Tribune from 1877 and for The Evening Sun from 1889, Riis gained insight into the social challenges New York was facing.

From the mid-1880s he actively engaged in the reform efforts to improve housing conditions for the part of the city's population who lived in inhumane conditions. Slightly at random, the camera and magnesium flash became one of Riis’ most important weapons in the struggle to create awareness about the need for a new and socially conscientious policy.

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Charlotte Haslund-Christensen (DK)

Charlotte Haslund-Christensen, WHO'S NEXT?, 2013. Boks med 42 fotografier
Tilhører: Preus museum
(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Charlotte Haslund-Christensen has photographed over 40 LGBTQ people in the basement of Copenhagen Police Station - mugshots of the criminals they would be in the 76 countries that outlaw same-sex relationships. The title WHO'S NEXT? is inspired by Martin Niemöller's protest against political apathy during the rise of Nazism in Germany: 'First they came for the communists/ And I didn't speak out/ Because I wasn't a communist ...'.

The book box is currently being smuggled to regions where LGBTQ people are denied basic human rights. An edition of signed box sets containing the 42 photographic prints is also for sale. The purchase of each box supports the distribution of WHO'S NEXT? to countries where LGBT people face daily prosecution and persecution and are denied basic human rights.

Click through the photos

Zanele Muholi (ZA)

Zanele Muholi, Faces and Phases, 2006-2014
Gelatin Silver Prints, special edition
Tilhører: Zanele Muholi / STEVENSON Cape Town/Johannesburg

(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Faces and Phases consists of a series of photographic portraits of gay women and transgender people in South Africa. The openness in the portraits is not something the women portrayed can take for granted as they are marginalized in the South African society. The stigma they are victims of leads to sexual violence, oppression, and hate crimes that include murder and rape. The proximity to the subjects challenge this stigma by presenting them as individuals and thereby humanize a group of people that is normally invisible.

Watch a film on Zanele Muholi

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Gustavo Germano (AR)

Gustavo Germano, Ausencias (Argentina) / Absences (Argentina), 2006-
Projeksjon
(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Through the juxtaposition of two pictures taken decades apart in similar situations, we see the horrific consequences of people being “disappeared,” killed by Latin American dictatorships. The first picture in the pair is a simple snapshot. Germano then recreates the image 30 years later and lets the people pose in the same way as in the original picture. It’s a method we also know from the internet, where children's images are recreated with older children, often with a very witty effect.

In Germano's project, however, the pain becomes clear in the unseen, in the person missing in the image; the absent. Germano himself lost a brother to the dictatorship’s murderous policies and the picture of him and his brothers serve as the starting image of the series.

Learn more about the project

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Students//Bending the Frame

Lesekrok med aktuelle bøker. Studentarbeidene på bordet til høyre.

(foto: Andreas Harvik/Preus museum)

Under forberedelsene til utstillingen kom spørsmålet om hvordan man kan engasjere den neste generasjonen fotografer opp. Preus museum kontaktet Fotografisk avdeling ved Akademin Valand i Göteborg og Oslo Fotokunstskole i Oslo, som gjerne ville samarbeide om et prosjekt under paraplyen Bending the Frame. Dette resulterte i en intensiv workshop med Ritchin og Enghoff i Göteborg i mai med studenter fra begge skolene. I etterkant har studentene frem mot utstillingen jobbet med individuelle prosjekter som har resultert i trykksaker som relaterer seg til emnet på ulike måter.

Utstilt er arbeider av:

Anna Jernryd / Camilla Fredin / Elsa Gregersdotter / Fanny Wallertz / Frederikke Krogh / Irene Margrethe Kalternborn / Jenny Janlöv / Jonathan Lystbæk Jørgensen / Marcus Reistad / Natasha Ferrante / Nora Savosnick / Sofia Doepel / Thea Emilie Milde Sundklakk / Ylva Teigen Aas / Åsa Båve

Film program

The exhibition has its own film program. The films are available below.

Magnus Wennman (SE)

Fatima’s Drawings (2016)
Film - 05.35

Photographer Magnus Wennman has followed nine-year-old Fatima during her first year in Sweden. Fatima, together with her mother and two siblings, fled from Syria to Sweden, and today she lives in Norborg, in Västmanland. She now goes to school and loves to draw. Through her drawings, Fatima shows us her memories from her homeland and her journey as a refugee. The video is part of Wennman's award winning project Where the Children Sleep and it is a moving story told from a child's perspective.

The images in the project Where the Children Sleep

See the film

Kent Klich (SE)

Kent Klich, Killing Time, framegraps from cell phones 2011

Killing Time (2011)
Film - 11.22

Killing Time, 2011, life in Gaza before and during the first days of Operation Cast Lead 2008-9, filmed with cell phones. All the main characters died. The film is part of a more than a decade long project about the Israeli - Palestinian conflict focusing on Gaza and is included in the book with the same name published by Journal in 2013.

Watch the film

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Wikileaks

Collateral Murder (2010)
Film - 17.47

On April 5^th, 2010, 10:44 EST, WikiLeaks released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad - including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded. The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.

After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement".

Learn more on the background

See the film below
Warning - strong scenes!

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#Dysturb (FR)

#WomenMatter

Outdoor poster exhibition

Poster på Horten torg med fotografi av Pep Bonet / NOOR (Foto: Benjamin Petit/Dysturb)

#Dysturb is an international group of freelance photographers who work on the streets and in urban spaces. They try to raise awareness about important political issues using news photography. When documentary photography is blown up in very large formats and thus becomes a part of the urban space, it will differ from conventional news coverage and thus reach a larger audience. They have created the campaign #WomenMatter especially for Horten, looking at women's exposed position worldwide.

The aim of #Dysturb’s work is to make news stories wider accessible, encourage community involvement and generate public debate about current political issues. #Dysturb is working in an activist way with ‘paste-up’ of their photos and they have made projects in New York, Paris, Sarajevo, Sydney, Melbourne and Tbilisi.

Find images, texts and map of locations