ICONS

I C O N S Joyce Tenneson A r n o R a f a e l M i n k k i n e n Trym Ivar Bergsmo Cig Harvey Jill Enfield Amy Arbus Connie Imboden Elizabeth Opalenik Ragne K. Sigmond Mark Olich Claire Rosen Eddie Soloway

NORDphotography - celebrating 10 years

I C O N S To mark our

10

year anniversary we present 12 images created by instructors we have collaborated with since our start.

The images is selected by our founder Elisabeth N Aanes, and represent some of her favourite images created by the artists.

NORDphotography

JOYCE TENNESON Old Man and Deanne, 1986

“The Little girl in the photograph, posed like a supplicant, is singularly beautiful. Her hair is luxurious and curly, her skin fresh with life. The old man beside her turns his back and will not pay attention; his flesh is so bloodless he might be receding physically as well as emotionally. The child’s profile has produced a dim double image of itself, perhaps an index of the intensity of her yearning, and she comes equipped with wings - but the wing we see is grey and ribbed like a bat’s, as if this angelic and neglected creature were somehow in league with the dark“ - excerpt from Joyce Tenneson’s book Transformations. Written

by Vicky Goldberg, Author and foremost critic in photography in the USA. Vicki Goldberg wrote the essay to my favourite book called “Transformations” almost 30 years ago.

The above quote is the first paragraph of her essay called: “Unwritten Myths”.

The Goldberg quote describes my relationship to this photo better than I could. It was taken when I first moved to New York City from Washington DC at age 40. For the next 10 years the photographs I took just emerged mysteriously from my subconscious, and were completely unpremeditated.

It wasn’t until a few years ago, that I realised this photo was actually a self-portrait of myself and my father...metaphorically speaking, I am the child supplicant who yearned to be seen and loved by a distant and very complicated father.

ARNO RAFAEL MINKKINEN Fosters Pond, 1990

Fosters Pond, 1990 was shot in mid-January, at the start of that new decade, on a day cold enough to ensure frostbite up to your knees if you stood there long enough. Better to turn into a great blue heron, spread your wings, and take off.

Soon after the picture was made—from a Polaroid Type 55 P/N negative—it became one of my bestknown works for a couple of years. It had achieved such a status through a number of appearances in photographic and art journals; but at the same time, I was bookless, twelve years by then, under the radar, as some had said. My first book, Frostbite, with a print run of some 5,000 copies had come out in 1978 and sold out pretty quick. It wasn’t until Waterline appeared from Marval, Otava, and Aperture in 1994 that my work reappeared, nudged a bit by winning the Grand Prix du Livre at the 25th Rencontres d’Arles.

Why all this backstory to speak about a great blue heron? Having a book in print nonstop, as ongoing as my work has always been, is crucial. Put another way, without a book in the air, especially in the age of appropriation that the 1980s encouraged, the work is out there for the taking. Whether a horse galloping for a cigarette ad or a migrant mother and her children, photography was a Walmart for artists stuck in no-way-out dead ends. Kelly Wise, the Boston Globe’s photographic critic at the time, called me in 1984 to inform me that someone—to be left nameless here—had started doing my work, or let’s say tacking a pair of fists to an image I had made ten years earlier. Plenty of other examples ensued soon enough. And as I found out with my first big show in Paris in 1986, some unknowing critics even claimed I had been inspired by the work I had influenced.

As a teacher of the history of photography I guess the calendar is a big part of it. Take the eighteen years of self-portraits I did with my son beginning two weeks after his arrival in 1979. That work was clearly inspired by Harry Callahan, my teacher at Rhode Island School of Design. His portraits of Eleanor with their daughter Barbara, installed as we saw them at New York’s Light Gallery at 57th and 5th Avenue owed a knock of thanks on the door of room #3003 in the Shelton Tower Hotel where Alfred Stieglitz first established photography’s intimate possibilities through his work with Georgia O’Keeffe there above the clouds over Manhattan decades and decades earlier. Midtown New York art galleries arrived on my CV a few years after Fosters Pond, 1990 came into being, and as luck would have it, ten years later, that blue heron journeyed farther than any work of mine ever had before, just a short flight actually, a few blocks downtown along Fifth to 53rd and right into the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. And that nameless other guy? Yeah, that someone was already there, in full force right from the start. But that’s how it goes—that work is monumental, literally—what lives are about, and the beauty of placing your hands and feet on the surface of the planet in unison, like a prayer to the earth.

TRYM IVAR BERGSMO Sea Floors #4, 2019

I was born here, in the North. Mountains, forests, shorelines, the distinct seasons, the wind, the light.

Throughout my childhood and youth I was submerged in these elements. I was surrounded, formed and shaped by the energy from this landscape.

This image is from a series of oceans and horizons. My intention was to convey the feeling of the large “space� that the sea and an unbroken horizon give us. For me the sea symbolizes eternity. The horizon symbolizes the human insight and recognition.

CIG HARVEY Dasha at The Demidov Palace, 2018

The Demidov Palace is hidden within a city block, obscure from the outside except for worn sculptures disappearing into the facade. Inside, the palace is now virtually empty. Room after room of parquet floors, damask wallpaper and chandeliers become the stage for our ideas.

The staff has been instructed to follow us around, but after a little while they drift off, bored with our ideas and we are left to do what we want. I photograph Dasha in the red room. The windows are covered with sheer curtains and so the interior becomes a giant soft box. It is unsettling it is so beautiful. Dasha’s ruby dress glows in the lambent light. I love it here. It’s as if the whole place is a secret.

So many of the museums in St Petersburg have elaborate curtains to keep out the sunlight and protect the art. I recommend them for all institutions. The combination of intrigue and the interactive element of pulling back the material is its own foreplay. It is the potential of things I suppose. The curtains at The Hermitage are my favourite things in the whole museum. I know I should be looking at the Rembrandt’s but they’re just so glum compared to the cream scalloped curtains.

JILL ENFIELD Statue of Liberty, 2009

As I was preparing for a show on “The New Americans” that was going to be on Ellis island between New York City and New Jersey, I needed to go back and forth to take measurements of the gallery spaces and have meetings with the curators. In order to get to the island, a person needs to take a boat from lower Manhattan. The trip lasts all of 10 minutes, so I brought my digital camera with me to photograph the landscape from the water.

As I was editing the photographs, I decided that the Statue of Liberty was particular important to the story of immigration and it should be included. However, as a digital image, it did not go with the rest of the show. I then made a digital positive and then I made a wet plate collodion glass plate, which is how all of the immigrant images were made. It then matched the rest of the show and all of the glass plates were scanned and printed in different sizes. The original glass plates were also included in the show, as well as a glasshouse of immigrants with the saying “Those in glasshouses should not throw stones”. We are all immigrants.

AMY ARBUS Nina / After Jeanne, 2012

My book After Images is a series of photographs inspired by modernist painters including Balthus, Cezanne, Corbet, Modigliani, and Picasso. I assembled a team of assistants, a stylist, and a makeup artist, and worked in a painted backdrop studio with actors and dancers as models.

As the project progressed, several pivotal moments really changed the trajectory of the project. We decided to paint the props to make them look more like antiques. Then we painted the highlights and shadows from the original paintings onto the models themselves. When I discovered that my makeup artist was colourblind, I realized it was a blessing in disguise. His misinterpretations led me to take more liberties with our recreations.

Nina/After Jeanne was a recreation of Amedeo Modigliani’s 1917 oil painting, Jeanne Ha Cloche.

It was my challenge to create the extremely soft lighting, distorted hand, and the incredibly long neck in Modigliani’s original work.

I used wider lenses and higher camera angles to create lens distortion. It was only after the photograph was printed that we realized the painted elements appeared to recede while the eyes seemed to advance.

It was as if the model were trying to escape the confines of her two-dimensional world.

This image is the cover of After Images, which was published in 2013, and remains the signature image of the collection.

CONNIE IMBODEN Untitled, 2017

This image was made using a model, a mannequin and plastic mirror shards. I have been exploring the combination of these three elements for several years and find that the possibilities are endless.

I don’t start with an image in mind. I set up the studio, pick a mirror shard, one of a large stack I keep in my studio, to work with for the day. (I have a large stack of these broken plastic mirror pieces.) This particular model is quite tall, with long arms and legs that I wanted to explore/work with. He tried different positions with his arms, while I was exploring lining up his reflection so it interfaced with the shard and the mannequin behind the mirror.

The image is, of course, graphically reminiscent of Christ’s crucifixion, but it does not bear the weight of agony or sacrifice. The arms are free and fluid, while the legs come together as one, as if he is pirouetting on the point of his toe. The outstretched arms speak more of presentation of form, the way a Spanish dancer might end his performance.

ELIZABETH OPALENIK Breakthrough, 2019

I believe that all good photographs are self portraits and know that my many former lives manifest themselves in my images.

Working underwater is hard for model and photographer, because so much depends on not disturbing the water with your breathing or stirring up the sediment in a pool, no matter how clean. Often models are new at this and there is a learning curve. For me the best way to teach these things is to be there with the model, with my Iphone in a case, so I could show them what I was seeing. No one can hear you when under the water in these situations, so clear directions must always be given before you submerge yourself. In my wildest dreams, I would not have expected to go from down jacket and wool cap into the swimming pool on this day, but that is the beauty of workshops where everyone must jump in to participate, including the instructor.

Although I travel with props, I had been lucky to find beautiful scarves in a local store in Straumen which greatly added to the days in the pool. The scarves floated elegantly and I think as a class, we bought them out! Dropping in a black backdrop cloth to the pool added to the contrast and allowed for exploration of the light and model in her primordial state.

Beauty comes from within. It certainly shone on this day with the strong spirit of the Norwegian models and participants.

RAGNE K SIGMOND Dualism, 2017

With this portrait my aim was to achieve a timeless atmosphere combining different lighting techniques: strobe flash, several seconds long shutter time and a dash of light painting. It’s a very intensive way of portraying a model, combining this blend technique together with instruction, making her presence intense, with a mysterious gaze towards the camera in this painterly atmosphere.

When I met this girl, a model that I spotted when one of my students used her for a photo shoot, I knew her remarkable face and shaved head would work wonders with a new idea of mine, where I focused on playing with shapes and lines as visual tools.

I teach lighting techniques on a daily basis at a photography school in Denmark, and therefore I always strive to challenge myself technically. For example to use specially designed gobo masks for projections spots.

In this photo nothing is manipulated in terms of make up or photoshop effects. What you see of light and shadows, shapes on face and background, are all made with light and absence of light.

MARK OLICH Jacobson Ballet, 2013

My work is entirely focused on the world of theatre and dance. The aim is to show what is happening in the boundary that separates the inside, the backstage, from the outer, public performance.

This photo was created as one of the options for a poster for the Jacobson Ballet Theatre. This is not taken during a performance - the production of this image was done on stage, at a later point.

This particular set up is from the Swan Lake , which is danced by the theatre. There are only four dancers in this mise en scène. We used six dancers because it looked more visually complete.

CLAIRE ROSEN Parakeet No 0970, 2014

Parakeet No. 0970 from Birds of a Feather, is a portrait series of birds photographed with graphic wallpaper backgrounds. The images reference that desire to possess the beautiful, wild and exotic, a possession that permanently changes the object of desire through its dislocation. The backgrounds in this series are selected to induce beauty, optical illusion and visual blending, the birds appear to belong when in reality it is a far cry from their natural environment. I learned of the tragic rate of abandonment and neglect associated with the parrot pet trade in the very early stages of this project. This propelled me to try and do more with my work, realizing that my artwork could generate awareness, dialogue and fundraising opportunities not purely existing for decoration.

Technically, the set is created by hanging a piece of wallpaper or fabric with a perch slightly in front. The lighting is arranged evenly with two strobe medium soft-boxes of equal power on either side. The soft boxes eliminate any shadows creating the illusion that the bird is two dimensional. Working with animals always requires plenty of care, patience, and allowing for the unexpected. You prepare, set everything technically, then surrender and hope for the best as you don’t really know what’s going to happen. If you are lucky, you capture an image that is better than what you imagined.

EDDIE SOLOWAY Moonlit Canoe, 2015

Dipping a paddle into a Northwoods lake, and watching the water swirl around its edges, has been a deep part of my life. For me, canoes are synonymous with wilderness. They have been my pathway to discovery, contemplation, and awe.

For the last twenty autumns I have made a trip to northern Maine, into the heart of 80,000 acres of protected wild country. It is the place where I clear my mind, make new photographs, and write. This image, made late one night, was lit by the moon. The light, like a lighthouse beacon, had come through my cabin window, waking me, and pulling me down to the lake.

DEBORAH TURBEVILLE IN MEMORY - written by Elisabeth N Aanes: I met Deborah in 2011, at the Nordic Light Festival in Norway.

She was about to do a lecture and notice that I was caring one of her books with me. She asked if she could borrow my book and show it in the lecture as it was one of her favourites (Past Imperfect). Intrigued by her approach I invited her for breakfast the next day, which she to my surprise accepted, as long as it was a late breakfast. She was not a morning person.

She invited me to come and visit her in New York. I did so later that year, and we made plans for the St Petersburg workshop, which took place February 2012.

My fondest memory of Deborah is during the evening lectures for the workshop. She told me she did not want to stand in front of the students and lecture. She wanted to sit comfortably. “Actually I would prefer to lie on a coach” and so she did. She talked about her work, and the inspiration behind it. She took us trough her experience in meeting Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and the process of making her masterpiece Unseen Versailles. She described the scenes when she reviled the mock-up of her book to Jackie O. and the editor for the first time. She had made two versions, one “to straight for words” and one “completely crazy version”. They went for the latter.

She had the class watch one of her favourite films (Last Year at Marienbad). A very beautifully film, but oh so monotone. After finishing it, she turned to the class and said ‘a hard film to watch, I know’. ‘Like pulling teeth’, was my replay. ‘I like the monotone pace of it, and that you have to work at it to get it. It is like a puzzle, which means different scenes will keep replaying in my mind, for me to interpret, and dissect. This movie has stayed with me for years, and keeps inspire me over and over again”.

Deborah had a great sense of humor, she was inspiring, very direct, uncompromising, and unique.

Listening to her talk was like being invited into a different universe, you had to pay attention, and be open to experience art on a completely different level. She made you feel like you where in the presence of greatness, and you would be right. Her work has made an everlasting imprint on photography, and though she is gone, it will live on forever.

Prima ballerina Vera Arbuzova, St Petersburg

THE STORY OF NORDphotogrtaphy I worked as an assistent for the renowned American Photographer Joyce Tenneson from 2005-2006.

In 2006 I returned to my homeland Norway, but kept my contact with Tenneson by organising one workshop a year at Joyce’s studio in Maine, USA. In 2008 Joyce suggested that I started my own business in Scandinavia, organising quality workshops with instructors like her, that had a strong passion for photography, and a wish to help expanding peoples talent. Joyce reached out to her contacts, and soon I had a team of instructors, who all were successful in their field, but also had great reputations as mentors and of helping others find the strength of their voices and talent.

Since then the company has grown to feature workshops in three countries and our curriculum has expanded to include courses in photography, multimedia, book-design, bookbinding and marketing for photographers.

In 2012 we renovated a former sawmill in the area Inderøy in Norway, and opened NORDphotography’s workshop center SAGA, a state of the art creative center with accommodation, gallery, classroom, social areas and a wet plate collodion lab. In the fall of 2018 we expanded with a Artist in Residence offer at SAGA, open to creative artists from all over the world.

NORDphotography’s faculty has grown with us, and consists of a fine selection of world class artists and professionals in the field of photography. It is a selection of individuals who are not only celebrated and collected as artists, but who have also gained recognition for being some of the best instructors in the world.

Now 10 years later we see the ripple effect of NORDphotography. Through the accolades former participants gain for work that got startet or created, on one of our workshops. Or work that got pushed into the light by an instructor. Or doors opened by our instructors for new talents to step through resulting in photo books published, exhibits, new carriers and most importantly great photography being created and shared with the world. Our goal for the next 10 years is to continue to honor our vision - inspire photographers to further their growth and development by arranging workshops and events that makes a difference.

Elisabeth N Aanes, founder NORDphotography

ICONS - Image and text by Joyce Tenneson, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Trym Ivar Bergsmo, Cig Harvey, Jill Enfield, Amy Arbus, Connie Imboden, Elizabeth Opalenik, Ragne K Sigmond, Mark Olich, Claire Rosen, Eddie Soloway.

Deborah Turbeville in memory written by Elisabeth N Aanes.

No photographs, text, or other materials from this book may be reproduced in any form without the written consentment from the Artists.

NORDphotography - celebrating 10 years Design by Elisabeth N Aanes Published by NORDphotography 2020 ISBN: 978-82-691540-2-3

NORDphotography nordphotography.com