NU21

NU21 is a photo exhibition for vocational education students in the Nordic countries. The NU exhibitions have been held yearly since 2017 by Yrkesinstitutet Prakticum in Helsinki (www.prakticum.fi). 

The aim of the exhibition is to develop photo education in the Nordic countries and give students and schools a platform to get visibility and promote themselves. This year’s theme is DISTANCE (& CLOSENESS). The photographs will be displayed digitally on a webpage and in print in an exhibition in Helsinki, Finland. 

Exhibition at LUCKAN  4.3.-31.3.2021
https://helsingfors.luckan.fi/
https://helsingfors.luckan.fi/en/

How Far is Away?

by A. D. Coleman

I write this in early February from my New York City home, far from Finland and Sweden. Yet I have lectured, taught, and published in both countries since the early 1990s, concentrating on the photography scenes in both countries. And this is the fourth time I have introduced this unique NU collaborative project, one of the ways in which I keep current with the zeitgeist of emerging photographers there.

This moment marks almost exactly a year since bits of news about a deadly virus with origins in China began to surface and circulate. Few of us could have imagined the toll it would take: the millions of lives we would lose to it, the devastating effect it would have on the world economically, the tragic consequences of its politicization, the countless ways — large and small — in which it has transformed daily life globally.

            Certainly we must count its effect on interpersonal relationships — not just professional and social but familial and intimate — as part of the price we must all pay to get through this and come out the other side. The coronavirus pandemic makes each one of us potentially dangerous to anyone with whom we come in contact, however briefly. And vice versa. That means any encounter with another human being — stranger, friend, relative, lover — involves the risk of death. In the most literal sense, we must keep our distance from each other in order to survive.

            This experience will mark us all, but will have its most shaping effect on the young. How will it define their perceptions of the world in general and their engagement with others from now on? If this small selection of visual responses to the theme of distance and closeness reflects the larger cohort to which they belong, that impact will prove deep and lasting.

            The eight participants (half from Finland, half from Sweden) range in age from  late teens well into adulthood. Regardless of age, they speak through photography at a most peculiar moment in 21st-century history. What do their pictures tell us? Several of them — Vera Orsa, Maj Tillman, and Kim Warren — propose that a renewed and even intimate engagement with the natural world can provide spiritual nourishment. The self-portraits of Madelene Boehm and Sara Lindborg, on the other hand, suggest isolation and alienation. So do the images of electric lights by Max Jacobsen, though the fact that they illuminate darknesses provide some sense of hope. Camilla Kjellberg’s photographs include other human beings, yet their tone suggest mourning and loss. Only Benjamin Rosenlund, in his playful images of a young woman, tacitly proposes that normal interpersonal relationships persist and may survive this plague.

            Let their sober assessment of our situation inspire those of us who are older to redouble our efforts to bequeath them a world in much better condition than the one that confronts them now.

Bio note:

Based in New York, A. D. Coleman currently celebrates his 53rd year as a critic, historian, and theorist of photography and photo-based art. His blog, Photocritic International, appears online at photocritic.com.

© Copyright 2021 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. By permission of the author and Image/World Syndication Services, [email protected].

CREDITS:

Sweden:

Media Teacher: Sara Samuelsson

SE Students:

Madelene Boehm
Max Jacobsen
Camilla Kjellberg
Kim Warren

FINLAND

Media Teacher: Nina Sederholm

FI Students

Sara Lindborg
Benjamin Rosenlund
Maj Tillman
Vera Örså

This Website has been produced by:
Filip Snellman with the help of Media Teacher Karl Hamberg