EXHIBITION:PhotographerS-in-residenCe / Anastasia Mityukova , KAROLINA GEMBARA, MANUEL CASTILLO JIMENEZ AND Marta Bogdanska  

DATE: 1.2-29.4 2021 LOCATION: OUTDOOR EXHIBITION AT JÄRNVÄGSGATAN, LANDSKRONA

Since 2014 Landskrona Foto has invited early to mid-career photographers and artists working with photography and lens-based media to engage in a photographic project related to the city of Landskrona. Each residency period has around 100 applicants from all over the world.

For this exhibition we asked four of our nine former photographers-in-residence to use one of our outdoor triangular structures to present some of the work they created while being in Landskrona for six weeks. This exhibition is a glimpse into what the photographers were drawn to while being in our city: We are introduced to historic figures such as Tycho Brahe and Selma Lagerlöf, the discovery of an old shipwreck in Öresund, and to a personal story of love and abandonment.

With our residency programme we want to give the photographers an opportunity to further their career and develop a new body of work far away from their daily life, and we also see it as an opportunity to let an outsider’s point of view enrich our city.  

Anastasia Mityukova (Swiss/Russia) / Seascapes - chapter 3 : Into the Blue 

Arriving in Landskrona during the the autumn of 2018, I was deeply attracted to the sea. Never before had I lived so close and for so long next to it. My fascination with Øresund drew me daily to look at this force of nature, and by talking to fishermen, tourists and locals I gathered an overall sense of the sea means to people. 

Here I present the third chapter of this research called Into the Blue. I followed a team of maritime archeologists from the  Bohuslän  Museum lead by Thomas Bergstrand. The team was looking for the ship Svärdet which sank in October 1658 after a battle in Øresund. They were commissioned by the Swedish Transport Administration and the County Administrative Board of Skåne to inspect the wrecks in order to ensure safety in the current waterway. The research would lead to an eventual green light to enlarge the entry of Landskrona harbour and bring in larger vessels to the shipyard. 

Karolina Gembara (Poland) / “As above, so below. As within, so without. As the universe, so the soul.”  

Tycho Brahe was especially interested in studying the movements of the planets – the Greek word for wanderers. Among his great discoveries were the planets’ conjunctions and a supernova. Both phenomena were used to explain the Betlehem Star, the symbolic signpost for the ones who went astray.  Before he went into exile in 1597, Tycho lived on the small island of Ven in southern Sweden. Today, that region is home to thousands of migrants and refugees who arrived over the past decades and also during the recent refugee crisis. 

Their journeys, often traumatic with the sky as the only witness, are part of humanity’s shared history – a history of migration and loss, of building constellations and seeing them fall apart, a history of running aground and starting anew. Mapping these journeys is an attempt to understand humanity’s fate: How does one one find herself, how does one lose his way? What awaits us at the end of those complicated trajectories? Is it really a matter of a second we burn out, drown or halt? And how do these maps concern us – the watchmen, the observers?

As we look at the images of thousands of people trying to cross the seas, in transit over boarders, we fail to see individual stories. Perhaps we need to study these individual maps and give attention to details so we can see ourselves in them.

Manuel Castillo Jimenez (Chile)  / Brasa 1428 

The images in these collages were taken during three different residencies in 2018 and 2019. In Landskrona (Sweden), Valparasio (Chile) and in Cordoba (Argentina).

During my travels I have lived in new places and connected with many different people and collected their stories. My photographs do not tell a story about a specific place or time, but instead they express the emotional journey life takes us on. It is not just my personal journey, but a combination of many different narratives I have encountered in life. The images become poetic illustrations about relationships, love, loneliness, loss and abandonment. 

I construct memories by combining letters, notes, found images and paint with analogue photography. I look for elements that break with the everyday rhythm of life and I accentuate errors.

Marta Bogdanska (Poland) / Love that dare not speak its name

The project was made in autumn 2020 and researches queer legacy and queer biographies. It follows the footsteps of Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf who was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1909 and membership in the Swedish Academy in 1914. Selma lived in Landskrona from 1885 to 1897 and this work traces the aspects of her life, thoughts and feelings that can be found in the city today. The writer asked for her private correspondence to be published no sooner than 50 years after her death, and when these letters were published in 1990 they revealed Selma Lagerlöf’s passionate relationships with women. By weaving several elements together – archives, images, video, interviews, sculptures – the project looks at Selma’s queer legacy and its impact today through an exchange with the local LGBTQ+ community.