October 25, 2013 9:00 AM
Sølve Sundsbø
A Sølve Sundsbø exhibition will launch Shoot, Oslo's first private gallery devoted entirely to art photography
October 25, 2013 9:00 AM
The first gallery dedicated exclusively to artistic photography in Oslo couldn’t but mark the debut with Sølve Sundsbø, one of the few names to have distinguished itself in the last decade that has introduced a truly innovative aesthetics, very individual and yet constantly versatile and that has succeed in perforating what the photographer himself calls “perfected mediocrity” that runs rampant in fashion photography.
Having left Norway for London in 1995, Sølve Sundsbø enrolled in a photography course at the London College of Printing though he attended it only for the first four months: he became the assistant to Nick Knight, the man who acted as his mentor and the person whom he fully devoted the following four years of his life to before starting to work solo, securing jobs for magazines like Vogue Italia, i-D, LOVE and W.
His photos have an estrangement effect on the viewer; they portray surreal-looking subjects characterized by an almost alien grace. Despite appearing digitally retouched, Sundsbø uses, in fact, many old-time analog techniques like hand-painted retouching and x-rays which he then combines with state-of-the-art technologies like 3D scanning. The resulting effect is an “uncanny valley” inhabited by human-like hyperrealistic beings, an aesthetics that is going to impact an entire generations of young photographers who see an authentic revolution taking place in Sundsbø’s photography.
In the occasion of the Gallery opening, we asked Sølve Sundsbø a few questions.
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In an interview with The Independent you stated that your apprenticeship with Nick Knight was “almost medieval in the way you devote yourself to your teacher” for years. What are the most important teaching that you learned from that experience? Can you learn to have a “photographer’s eye”?
“I think you can learn to have a photographer’s eye. First of all, through hard work. What I learnt as a young photographer was to try to find my own way to look at the same things everyone else was looking at. Nick taught me to break away from the conventional and not be afraid of breaking the rules.”
How did your way of seeing change from the beginning of your career to now?
“I think that I have so much more experience now, so the basic things are so much easier and I can concentrate on the more important issues.”
There is an almost universal assumption that photography tells the truth, that it has a documentary value: we are more prone to accept fiction in films than we are in a still image. Do you play with this concept in your pictures?
“It is a lot easier to create an illusion in photography and get people to believe it. My job as a photographer is to manipulate reality in order to tell what I want. The fact that people initially believe in photography makes it easier for your audience to believe in what you are saying.”
What are the old fashioned techniques you use the most in building and constructing your images? And what about the innovative ones?
“I think we live in a mixture of past and future and the question of technique is not necessarily so relevant. I think it is important to be able to use all the old and new techniques, but to forget about them when you take the picture.”
Will you ever be interested in trying a photojournalistic project or a long-term personal artistic project? If so, what would it be?
“If I knew what it was I would have done it already. I am waiting for opportunities and I am open to them”.
