Norwegian Art Photography

This book represents the first monograph on modern Norwegian photography from the 1970s to the present. It traces recent developments taking place in the four movements in photography: Subjectivism, Abstraction, Post-Modernism and Photorealism. Subjectivism reigned supreme in Norwegian photography until well into the 1980s. It was rooted in the principles that a photograph could not lie and had to reproduce reality. The early 1990s ushered in the dawn of Post-Modernism in Norwegian art. Photographs were no longer viewed as mirroring reality but rather as works whose meaning was context-related. The result of this shift in focus was an array of new possibilities for expression and new themes.

The present book also shows the influences Norwegian artists and photographers from other countries exerted on each other, a tendency that also shows up in the many Norwegian photographers active internationally. After being overshadowed for decades by other art forms, photography now plays a major role on the international art scene (galleries, art fairs, public institutions, collectors).