Encountering Photography: A Scandinavian Perspective

Installation shot from Documents, Fotografisk Center, 2025. Fotograf: Torben Eskerod

We encounter photographs at a steadily increasing pace. We share them on social media, we see them on the internet, and we all carry around a relatively advanced camera in our pockets, which professional photographers from the 19th and 20th centuries couldn’t foresee. Consequently, since the 1990s, we have seen an increase in art exhibitions of photographic works, and photography is now included both as an exhibition object in medium-specific art spaces, broader art and cultural history museums, and as a commodity in various galleries.

At the same time, the photographic image has taken on new forms over the past 30 years. Media specificity has increasingly been dissolved, and various digital manipulation techniques have contributed to an erasure of photography’s traditionally inherent, documentary properties. These factors have greatly influenced the work of photographic artists, which is clearly reflected in the current exhibition, Documents, at Fotografisk Center in Copenhagen.

Encountering Photography takes as its starting point the abovementioned themes. It raises fundamental questions of how art photography has developed and how photography is presented in exhibitions in today's institutional landscape. Do multimedia influences require a new conceptual apparatus? Is it still relevant to emphasize the explicitly photographic? Can one deal with ephemeral photographic works in the gallery? And how does one apply photo-theoretical concepts that have arisen in a different media reality to a new type of photographic art? The conference seeks to debate these questions and deal with them in different Scandinavian contexts.

The main goal of the conference is ultimately to create a dialogue between photographic institutions and actors and their exhibition activities in Scandinavia. How can we ensure that photography continues to maintain a position in the exhibition landscape of the future, despite the more ephemeral forms? And what can we do to prevent photography from ending up as a niche medium that can only be approached with an outdated vocabulary? With Encountering Photography, we want to contribute to the dialogue and collaboration between Scandinavian actors in the field - artists, museums, exhibition venues, galleries and research institutions, as well as to an expanded discursive framework that can lead photography and photo-based art strongly into the coming decades.

The seminar is being held as part of Oscar Vindel Schönström's PhD project ‘Det dokumentariske kunstfotografi’ (2023-2026) in collaboration with Fotografisk Center and the University of Copenhagen. The PhD project is supported by the New Carlsberg Foundation.

 

Oscar Schönström begins the conference with an overview of the types of photography that has historically been exhibited at Fotografisk Center and other media-specific institutions in Denmark. In this context, he asks the question of how institutions should approach the exhibition of photography, and whether there may be a risk that photography (due to its increasing volatility and multimediality) may lose its exhibition value? In continuation of his PhD thesis on the institutional development of photography in Denmark and Sweden, several research results will pave the way for a discussion on whether photo-specific institutions are facing a difficult time, or whether they are the ones who are best able to embrace the medium in its rapidly changing forms.

The question will subsequently be addressed by a number of invited guest lecturers from the rest of Scandinavia, each of whom will present their own take on how photography can best be handled in 2025 (and in the future):

Nanna Debois Buhl is a visual artist and has a PhD from the Royal Danish Academy of Art. Through her photographic work, she connects scientific, aesthetic, and speculative perspectives to nurture attentiveness to materials and to tell counter-histories. She is currently exhibiting at Fotografisk Center and will partly present her artistic practice and partly enter a dialogue with Klara Källström-Fäldt about academic art photography research.

Behzad Farazollahi is a practicing photographer but also excels as a curator and director of the exhibition venue MELK in Oslo, Norway. From a Norwegian perspective, he will explore how photography thrives in an exhibition venue like MELK, which also has a commercial aspect. Compared to the others, he will therefore also comment on the status of photography on the market in a media-ephemeral reality.

Klara Källström-Fäldt is a visual artist, PhD student and Senior Lecturer at HDK-Valand in Gothenburg, Sweden. Both as an artist and as an academic scholar, she examines the instability of historical narratives and temporal disjunctures. Like Buhl, she is currently exhibiting in Documents and will present her practice, while engaging in the beforementioned dialogue.

Kristyna Müller is the director of Centrum för fotografi (CFF) in Stockholm, Sweden, that has presented exhibitions under its own auspices since 1999 and simultaneously shaped the discourse of photography in Sweden. Müller will present the history of the institution and give an overview of how their work differs from other photographic institutions.

Jenny Nordquist is the director of Landskrona Foto, an exhibition venue for photography in southern Sweden. In addition to presenting exhibitions, they organize the Landskrona Foto Festival. Nordquist will explain the institution's work and discuss how the festival format can provide a new perspective on the exhibition of photography.

 

 

12:30-12:45 Welcome by Signe Kahr Sørensen, Director Fotografisk Center
12:45-13:05 Oscar Schönström: Encountering Photography
13:05-13:25 Nanna Debois Buhl: Presentation of artistic research
13:25-13:45 Klara Källström-Fäldt: : Presentation of artistic research
13:45-14:05 Jenny Nordquist: presentation of Landskrona Foto (Festival)
14:05-14:30 Coffee and cake break
14:30-14:50 Kristyna Müller: presentation of Centrum för fotografi
14:50-15:10 Behzad Farazollahi: presentation of MELK
15:10-16:00 Closing remarks and conclusion
16:00 Reception

 

Registration

Free and open to all. Seats are limited so please register. Latest 26 October 2025.