YNGVILD MEHREN
NYSTØRM - SCOTLAND / NORWAY
16 DECEMBER
2009
Written by
ANNABEL FENN
Chronicles of Norway
The cold snap of Dr Seuss
shaped candy-cane trees adds sprinkles of the fairytale to
the frothy, saccharine Norwegian snow-lair captured by
Yngvild Mehren Nystrøm’s sanguine gaze. The falling flakes
of ice are highlighted by the camera flash, which pushes the
photograph out towards you as the eye is simultaneously
drawn toward the back of an anonymous figure, so that the
forest wraps around your face like a fluffy and soft polar
skin to nestle your head in. The ‘Chronicles of Norway’ is
an aptly named photograph encompassing the wonder of
mythical and magical children’s stories with a biblical
sense of majesty.
Images Not Captured
Like Paul Graham, Nystrøm’s photographs do not pretend to be
anything but what they are – mechanical images made at the
discretion of the photographer’s index finger - and as a
result, Nystrøm’s interactions with her subjects and
landscapes shines through, and we in turn become part of
these relationships, as a doppelganger of Nystrøm herself.
Her relationship with the subject is obviously important to
her. She quotes from Barthes’ photographic inquiry into the
death of his mother, that he is ‘a subject who feels he is
becoming an object’. Even though she is pointing the lens
away from herself, her quaint, freshly baked personality
rises up in waves of heat from the cold print. We’re led by
this affectionate Girl Guide on a sensitive tour of Norway,
promoting exploration and trust in the wilds. You want to
expatiate on the silent dialogue the man has with his
animals, the dispersed conversation Nystrøm pauses in, in
which to press the shutter button. There is no distance
here, only intimacy.
These Modern Explorers
Using merely a torch and a frozen lake,
Nystrøm creates an aerial view of a lost world; a silent
peak on a harsh flat topography, a barren fissure masking a
trace of life revived by a spotlight.
Myth
Straddling between two spheres, the
photographic and the physical, the images touch an element
of the unreal, a fictive narrative not to be trusted.
Perhaps it is the light (bruises and blues) that bounce from
the crouching dog’s coat. You want to believe in the unreal
and the magic. To go hunting; you want to be there and feel
the cold sharpness sting your throat and your nose to drip.
When the urban cold and rising damp seeps into your bones,
at least you can be spirited away into the dynamics Nystrøm
has delicately captured by listening to Múm, with a blanket
on your knee and a head full of Nordic adventures.
http://yngvildmn.foto.no/
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