The works are radical whispers and we need to step closer to hear the unrest. It resides in personal narratives, stories of the world told from the unique perspective of each artist. Brimming with life the works tread around the artists’ selves in the exhibition Stare, which opens at Gerðarsafn during the Iceland Photo Festival 2025.
The people in the exhibition stand exposed before the audience. They invite us to come closer, to gaze at them. But they also stare back at the viewer, far from being powerless subjects of the photographer; rather, they are the main actors. We are welcome to bear witness to their story but do so on their territory.
The photographic medium plays a leading role in the exhibition with imperfection characterizing many of the images, where carefully constructed composition and technical perfection are cast aside to approach sincerity, attempting rather to show life as it is. Rawness is employed to make us see from an emotional level and show us the energy, trauma, chaos, and drama of life, but also the humour and creativity. Traditional rules of the photographic medium are broken in an ode to the medium. Here, great beauty lies, but it is not the beauty of fine literature and landscape painting; instead we have buzzing and punk lyrics, diary entries and open hearts, bodily fluids and vulnerability. Which becomes unbreakable in its fragile softness.
Image: An Obscure Self Portrait, Adele Hyry, 2020.
