Seminar of the Fotobokfestival Oslo 2021; Photography and Words: Narratives, Stories, Representations

23 August 2021 | Deichman Bjørvika, Oslo

PANEL I  //  REPRESENTATION AND BEYOND

Zofia Cielatkowska, Photography as a Practice of Seeing (curator’s introduction to the festival)
Deborah Willis, A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship (fragment from the lecture – video, New York University, 2021)
Sofie Amalie Klougart on Dette året (2021)
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Overwintering

PANEL II  //  PHOTOGRAPHY AND WORDS

Line Ørnes Søndergaard and Yohan Shanmugaratnam on BRUDDET/ THE SPLIT (2021).
Tonje Bøe Birkeland on The Characters, The Buthan Trilogy (2021).
Jiri Havran on Photography After Sebald.
Tomas Espedal, Liv og kunst. Liv som kunst.

PANEL III  //  PUBLIC SPACE

Viel Bjerkeset Andersen, Mot nord (Towards North); Arbeidersamfunnets plass seen from an Artist’s Point of View.
Siv Hofsvang, On Public Space

BIO

BIO | Deborah Willis 
Deborah Willis, PhD, is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.  She is the author of The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship and Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, among others. Professor Willis’s curated exhibitions include: "Framing Moments in the KIA," "Migrations and Meanings in Art", "Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits” at the International Center of Photography; Out of Fashion Photography; Framing Beauty at the Henry Art Gallery and "Reframing Beauty: Intimate Moments" at Indiana University. //debwillisphoto.com/

BIO | Sofie Amalie Klougart is a Danish photographer based in Oslo. She has worked as a photography teacher and as a photo editor. Her projects portray site-specific environments that reveal global issues and tendencies. Klougart has exhibited in renowned institutions at well as in more experimental formats; in museums, art centres and at various international photo festivals. In 2022 she will be exhibiting at The National Museum in Oslo.

BIO | Thomas Hylland Eriksen is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, as well as the 2015–2016 president of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. His work is motivated by a triple concern: to understand the present world, to understand what it means to be human, and to help bring about social and environmental change. Apart from academic publications, he also write essays and miscellaneous nonfiction intended for the general reader.

BIO | Line Ørnes Søndergaard (b. 1986) is a documentary photographer working with social and political issues. Her intimate photographic approach has received attention in the photographic landscape and awarded at large; (a.o) Norwegian Picture of The Year, Picture Of the Year International, The Lucie Foundation and NPPA Best of Photojournalism award. Søndergaard has been selected for prestigious programs such as World Press Photo’s Joop Swartz Masterclass and Norwegian Journal of Photography and her work has been exhibited (a.o.) at Dokfestivalen in Fredrikstad, Fotografiens Hus in Oslo and Henie Onstad Center of the Arts. Søndergaard lives at Nesodden, Norway.

BIO I Yohan Shanmugaratnam  (b. 1979) is a foreign news journalist in the daily Klassekampen and the author of the critically acclaimed book Vi puster fortsatt (We are still breathing). This personal story about racism and roots in Norway and the world at large became an instant success and Aftenposten named it one of ten best books to be published in 2020. The last couple of years British politics, Brexit and related subjects have been his main field of coverage as a journalist, writer and panelist. Shanmugaratnam lives in Oslo, Norway.

BIO | Tonje Bøe Birkeland (b. 1985 in Bergen, Norway) has an MFA from Bergen Academy of Art & Design. Birkeland started working on the project The Characters in 2008, with an aim to encapsulate an entire artistic practice. For the past 10 years, Birkeland’s project has allowed her to give women a position within the landscape while exploring the authenticity of history. Her project The Characters awarded Birkeland The Victor Fellowship by The Hasselblad Foundation in 2012, and the first book of The Bhutan Trilogy (2016) won second place in the Norwegian Design Contest Årets Vakreste Bøker (2017). She has also been published in The Norwegian Journal of Photography, Fritt Ord (2017), and in Girl on Girl – Art & Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze, Charlotte Jansen, Laurence King Publishing, London (2017).

BIO | Jiri Havran is a Czech/Norwegian photographer based in Oslo. Born 1953 in Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic, in Norway since 1974. In recent years he has worked on visualizing battlefields of the Middle Ages and battlefields of the Thirty Years' War (1618-48). Havran has participated in a number of publications on both modern and traditional architecture. Has had several solo exhibitions both in Norway and abroad, participated in many group exhibitions, and published several monographs. While working with documentary photography during the 80s, from the early 90s he works with project-based photography. Several of those projects have resulted in both exhibition and a monograph, “Årdal Hva?” (with Leif Gabrielsen and Raymond Mosken), “from architecture”, Gallery Jaroslav Fragner, Prague, “Railway’s Typology”, Hedmark kunstsenter, Hamar, “Historic Landscape”, Gallery Balder, Oslo and “Photo after Sebald”

BIO I Thomas Espedal (b. 1961, Bergen) debuted as an author in 1988. He is a graduate of the University of Bergen and has published both novels and short stories. In 1991 he was awarded a prize in the P2 / Book Club's novel competition for She and I (Hun og jeg, 1991). He has been the initiator of the Bergen International Poetry Festival. Tomas Espedal often experiments with various genres. In his later publications, Espedal writes closely about his own life and experience. Espedal published inter alia; Elsken (2018), Mitt privatliv (2014), Imot naturen, notatbøkene (2011), Imot kunsten, notatbøkene (2009),  Gå. Eller kunsten å leve et vilt og poetisk liv (2006), Brev, et forsøk (2005), Dagbok, epitafer (2003), Biografi, glemsel (1999).

BIO | Viel Bjerkeset Andersen is a Norwegian visual artist and sculptor mainly working with site-specific art projects. Over the years, she has been involved in several public art projects, and due to innovation and her ability to produce surprising works, they are both interesting and relevant. She has been ground breaking in the field of art in infrastructure in Norway. Her art works can be close to both architecture, landscape architecture and landart, but she also works with sculptures, objects and installations in different media. Her art projects relate to the site’s history and situation, often influenced by the presence of the sun and the site’s specific light and acoustics, and always with a focus on the human scale, movement and perception connected to its environments. Viel Bjerkeset Andersen has her education from SHKS and SKA, now both part of Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She has also been an artist in residence at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, at a one-year French Government’sscolarship. She has been giving several talks in different fora for more than twenty-five years and is also working as a curator.

BIO I Siv Hofsvang is anassistant professor at OsloMet, Faculty of Technology, Art and Design, Department of Art, Design and Drama Lecturing in Art History, with an emphasis on contextual and material qualities. Lecturer and co-ordinator for study on photography and print, and architecture and public space. Previously LES committee member for KORO working with art projects in public space and curator and exhibition organizer at Galleri F 15 and Punkt Ø.Since her master thesis on the Guerrilla Girls, her special interest has been on art and the public interaction. She is particularly interested in what happens in the meeting between the public and the artwork, and the totality of the art experience.

BIO I Zofia Cielatkowska is a philosopher and an independent researcher, curator, and art critic. She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and works across the fields of visual culture, feminist art history, contemporary French thought, Norwegian contemporary art, and environmental humanities. She publishes in various art magazines (Kunstkritikk, Hyperallergic, Tique Art, etc.). Cielatkowska is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and The Norwegian Critics’ Association (Norsk kritikerlag).She lives in Oslo, Norway.