Ole Brodersen

Time by the Sea

It was Dag O. Hessen (biologist, professor at the Oslo Uni and author) who opened my exhibition ‘Time with the Sea‘ last year. In his speech, the environment and climate debate was a common thread, and Hessen pointed out that it is the sea that Norway will live off of after our short oil intermezzo is over. In order to create greater awareness and engagement around the debates, he believed that the role of art is essential: \"Must art be legitimized by its usefulness? I do not mean that, in the same way that research should not have to legitimize itself by its immediate and concrete utility value. But nevertheless, it is clear that art and science can be united, perhaps even should be united, now that our future is at stake. Research can perhaps engage one hemisphere of the brain, but art is needed to engage the other. Man is a visual animal, and the major environmental battles can only be won by engaging both hemispheres of the brain.\" The ability to see the invisible through photographic technology has resulted in a unique interaction between human and mechanical optics - an interplay that has been dominant in several scientific fields since the 19th century, and laid the groundwork for what we know and how we acquire new knowledge. In my photographic work, landscapes and what affects them are thematised. With that, I try to uncover something more than the purely optical visual: to capture the feeling of being present in these landscapes, by creating an imprint in, with or through movement and time. Our sensory apparatus is too coarsely tuned to register the changes in nature, and it can be too abstract for many to take in – topped by the challenges with the shifting baseline syndrome. Maybe landscape photography can be used to open an awareness around what we do not see? That this interaction between human and mechanical optics can hopefully help to make visible the changes, and at the same time shed light on human shortcomings and their consequences.

Photographer

Ole Brodersen

I am a Norwegian photographer based on a car-free island with 70 inhabitants, where I grew up as the 12th generation in my family. I rowed to school, have crossed the Atlantic in a boat from 1894, my father is a sailmaker and my grandfather was a captain. In an old herring-saltery from 1890, I have set up a darkroom, where I can print large silver gelatin prints on fibre/baryta paper. I was recently acquired by the Norwegian National Museum of Photography.

Next year I will cross the Atlantic again, and photographs from this crossing will be exhibited in Venice. Also combined with kite aerial large format photography (8x10).

I was the assistant of Dag Alveng (i.e. the Met. and MOMA), I have exhibited together with i.e. Tom Sandberg, Pentti Sammallahti, Pixy Liao, Aapo Huhta and Simen Johan, been published by the New Yorker and Harper‘s Magazine and been curated by Roger Ballen. In November I will also take part in a group show at Flowers Gallery in London.

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