® Svetlana Khachaturova
landskrona foto
press information 030316
Landskrona aims to become a new centre for photography in Scandinavia.
During the summer Landskrona Foto, as this drive is called, is presenting two
major exhibitions at Landskrona museum – AgNO3 och Landskrona Foto: View
Ireland. The summer ends with the fourth edition of Landskrona Foto Festival,
the 19th-28th August.
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From the exhibition AgNO3 in Landskrona: The Svedberg, winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1926, shown here after an ether explosion in the laboratory.
AgNO3 – Histories of Science
and Photography in Sweden
16/6 2016- 29/1 2017
Landskrona plans to establish Sweden’s first major museum of the history
of photography. Institutionalized cooperation with Lund University is now
being built up, in research fields such as the preservation of the photographic
heritage, the role of photography in science, and how photography has shaped
our image of society and the world. Pending the opening of the Museum of
Photography (2018–19), three exhibitions will presented on the subject of the
history of photography at Landskrona Museum, the first in June this year.
AgNO3: Histories of Science and Photography in Sweden is about the use of
photography in science and research, 1839–2016; as a method, as evidence, as
a scalpel, magnifying glass, mirror, and more. AgNO3, the chemical formula for
silver nitrate, has been used since the very first photographs and right up to our
own days.
“We have borrowed photographs from a number of museums, institutions and
universities all over Sweden,” says Janne Jönsson, curator of the exhibition at
Landskrona Museum.
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“We have tried to find original pictures as far as possible, for their authenticity
and aesthetic merits. Here the lenders have been incredibly obliging when you
bear in mind the sensitivity of the material. Of course, it has helped that we
have invested in new lighting and a new climate control system.”
The exhibition consists of 11 rooms with about 25 stories based on different
scientific questions. For example: What a disease can look like, how an
explorer charts white spots on the map, how dusty insect collections enjoy a
renascence, how criminals should be pictured to be most easily recognized,
how a housewife moves at the cooker, what types of cloud exist, why
parachutes do not open, how to portray spruce trees or analyse the innermost
structures of the brain.
Unlike most other photo exhibitions, text plays a significant role in AgNO3. The
photographs in themselves are appropriately fascinating, but often they were
taken in contexts and places that add a further dimension to the viewing. The
visitor becomes acquainted not only with serious scientists in white coats
but also with murderers and missionaries. Sometimes what is scientifically
interesting in the pictures did not arise until our own times. For example,
photographs of glaciers from the 1870s testify to the extent of today’s climate
changes.
“Some pictures provoke laughter, others sadness,” Janne Jönsson continues.
“But as a whole the exhibition describes a remarkable and engaging journey,
from naivety and curiosity in difficult conditions and severe hardships, to
today’s controlled and ultramodern research environments. No exhibition like
this has ever been shown in Sweden.”
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Garden 5 from the series Home Instruction Manual -® Jan McCullough
Landskrona foto:
VIEW IRELAND
30/6-25/9 2016
Red-haired children play at the foot of green rolling hills. An old man with a
scarred face enjoys a beer in his favourite pub. The locals desperately throw
stones at British soldiers in one of Belfast’s poorest districts...
In the last two summers, Landskrona Foto has presented the photography and
photographers of another country. The series started with Turkey, followed by
the Czech Republic, and now in 2016 it is Ireland’s turn – not just the Republic
of Ireland but the whole island, including Northern Ireland. Landskrona Foto:
View Ireland will be shown at Landskrona Museum.
In this exhibition of photographic history we relate to the visual cliché of
Ireland. The image that has stuck on picturesque postcards and in newspaper
features, and probably also in many people’s minds.
How have Irish photographers actually viewed their homeland through history,
and how do they view their own country today?
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Which photographers have related to The Image of Ireland? What pictures were
never taken?
As far as we know, there is no photographic documentation of one of the
greatest disasters the country has experienced. When The Great Famine broke
out in 1845, the camera had been known in Ireland for several years, but no
one photographed the great famine. A decade later, however, when the county
was still suffering the after-effects of the famine, photography was established
in a completely different sphere. In the shelter of The Big Houses, upper-class
ladies frequently used the new technique.
Over a hundred years later the newspapers were filled with ink from a different
trauma. Northern Ireland in the time of the troubles has been depicted
by many people, but the media narratives about it have often looked very
different. We find a more personal narrative in Patrick McCoy’s series The
People’s Taxis (1998). Here we see very close-up portraits of passengers
travelling in the black taxis on the Falls Road. The claustrophobic back seat
becomes a reflection of the social strains of life in the midst of the conflict.
In contrast to the depiction of violence there is the idea of Ireland as a fairytale
country, the tourist’s dream of The Emerald Isle. In the collage series Irelantis
(1990s) the photographer Sean Hillen smashes this illusion of a picturesque
Ireland. In his postcard-size works we see a completely different, complex
landscape.
Another idea has been explored by the contemporary photographer Jan
McCullough in her latest project. In Home Instruction Manual (2014–2015) she
searches for an identity in a way that has not previously been attempted:
I typed “how to make a home” into Google, and was directed to an online chat
forum in which self-described experts were exchanging detailed instructions. I
rented an ordinary suburban house and carried out the strangers’ advice exactly
over the period of two months.
During the process of creating the “perfect” home, McCullough pondered on
how a personality is formed. She documents the final result of her time living
and working in the house, a place where she tested different ways of living.
The exhibition also presents works by: Mary Countess of Rosse, Lady Louisa
Tenison, Dennis Dinneen, Paul Seawright, Anthony Haughey, Trish Morrissey,
Eamonn Doyle, Grace Weir, Laurence McKeown, Arthur Fields, Patrick Hogan
Broomberg & Chanarin, Bertien van Manen and others...
The exhibition is being produced in collaboration with PhotoIreland, Belfast
Exposed, Gallery of Photography Ireland and Culture Ireland.
The curator of the exhibition is Jenny Lindhe in cooperation with Ángel Luis
González, Trish Lambe, Tanya Kiang and Ciara Hickey.
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2minutes, Waiting ® Jason Larkin
LANDSKRONA FOTO FESTIVAL
19-28/8 2016
This summer Landskrona Foto Festival will take place for the fourth time
under the new artistic direction of Christian Caujolle and Jenny Nordquist.
New for 2016 is the focus on outdoor exhibitions. The white walls of the
gallery will move outside in exhibitions located throughout the city. The aim
is to present photographers that are new to the Swedish audiences, and to
explore new points of views from around the world. In the exhibitions the
photographers reflect over the local culture, environment and history in
countries such as Senegal, China, Cambodia and Korea.
A large number of these outdoor exhibitions are opening before the festival,
allowing the city’s visitors and locals to enjoy them for the entirety of the
summer. The two first exhibitions, by artists Jason Larkin and Denis Darzacq,
open in Landskrona’s theatre park in June. In Larkin’s series Waiting we
see commuters seeking out the shade whilst waiting for public transport in
Johannesburg. The photographs become a metaphor for other things that
seem to be part of many people’s lives in South Africa. The wait for jobs,
opportunities and political change.
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Darzacq’s exhibition The Fall depicts young people falling out of buildings in
Paris. Why is no one there to catch them? The artist asks himself in the series,
that he created as a reaction to the 2005 Paris riots.
The exhibitions shown in and outside Landskrona museum during the festival
are all thematically connected to the museum’s exhibition about scientific
photography – AgNO3. In an exhibition by well-known photographer and
recipient of the 2013 Hasselblad award Joan Fontcuberta we question the
medium of photography as bearer of truth. For over 30 years Fontcuberta has
explored and questioned photography as a medium. He plays with the concept
of truth, and for the series Herbarium he has created imaginary plants from
objects such as an electric cord, plastic, shaving equipment and a rubber hose.
Wonderful Occupations by Russian photographer Svetlana Khachaturova will be
exhibited outside the museum building. In the series Khachaturova presents
playful and colourful portraits of people doing simple scientific experiments in
front of the camera.
At Landskrona konsthall we are showing work by the internationally acclaimed
Finnish photographer Elina Brotherus and the new discovery Dorothée Smith
from France. In her self-portraits Brotherus explores the relationship between
the individual and the environment in the context of interior and landscape.
Smith’s work can be considered observations of the construction, deconstruction and transformation of identity. Photography is mixed with video,
hybrid art and new technology.
Welcome to Landskrona Foto Festival, 19-28 August 2016.
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More information
landskronafoto.org
Press photographs
www.landskrona.se/Media/Pressbilder/Aktuella-pressbilder.aspx
Questions and information
Josefin Garpvall Bahary
Kommunikation och marknadsföring
Landskrona Foto Festival
+46 (0) 418-47 05 73
[email protected]
Göran Nyström
Verksamhetsledare
Landskrona Foto
0709-47 05 82
landskronafoto.org
Questions and information regarding the exhibition AgNO3
Exhibition curator Janne Jönsson
+46 (0) 709 470575
[email protected]
Museum lecturer Anneli Oxenstierna
+46 (0) 709 470568
[email protected]
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