Morten Andersen
Born in Akershus, Norway 1965. Started making fanzines and taking pictures of friends in punk rock bands when 15 years old in 1980. Continued shooting for bands and norwegian music press during the 1980s, also worked in the darkroom at a daily newspaper in Oslo. Moved to New York and studies at International Center of Photography in 1990, teachers included photographers like Joan Liftin, Nan Goldin, Ken Schles and Larry Clark. Internship with Magnum photographer Gilles Peress. First solo exhibition at Fotogalleriet in Oslo 1992, since then solo and groupshows in New Zealand, France, Germany, Greece, Russia, Italy, Austria, Holland, England, Sweden, USA, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland. Have published 12 books of his own work: Fast City (1999), Days of Night (2003), Oslo F. (2005), Leira (2006), White Nights (2006), Fast/Days (2007), ASS TIME GOES BY (2008), Blå Skog/Blue Forest (2009), Jetlag and Alcohol (2009), Color F (2010), M in M (2011) and Black and Blue (2011).
Reciever of several grants and since 2011 reciever of Government Guaranteed Income for Artists.
Lives and works in Oslo, Norway.
www.shadowlab.no
Artist statement
Since 1999 the photobook have been my main medium to show my work in. Since then I have made and published 12 books, most of them selfpublished. Besides beeing an object of art in itself the book is a democratic, accessible and intimate medium where the the sum of the single images and the editing creates a larger whole that, like in a novel or a film, makes a story that can bring you to a new place and experiences. Common for all the work and the motivation for photographing comes from a curiosity and a desire to explore and investigate places and environments, either it is Oslo, norwegian forests, my neighbourhood, Oslos underground rock scene or international cities.
Black and Blue: Morten Andersen
Oslo, the capital of a small Nordic country perched on the western stretch of the Scandinavian peninsula (not counting some additional bits suspended in the sub-zero waters of the North sea) is famous for several things: its noble Nobel prize-bestowing ceremonies, its distincly patterned jumpers, the bands of marauding trolls that roam the streets of its centre on dark winter nights. It's a compact, well-organised and easily navigable town, whose general vibe tends to swing between the utterly drab and dismal – it figures Munch and Hamsun did not live in Tahiti – and the light-dappled loveliness of a long summer afternoon, as it leisurely fades into a raucous white-night. Just when you've convinced yourself that you've arrived at the stifling nexus of middle-class, middle-brow, natural fabrics and untreated wood finishes, boom, there crops up a clust of the deadliest death medal dudes the world has ever seen. With a baby pram in tow, complete with a very deadly looking mini-metalhead inside. When I first came to visit Oslo, it was late fall and I had just had an accident – my left knee had gone through a window pane of a door and I was sporting numerous stitches and an enormous black bruise that stretched from my lower thigh to my lower shin. I hobbled down the cobbles of the inner city in an unimistakably foul mood – my leg hurt, it was gloomy and cold, and the armies of industrious citizens in busy jumpers were vigorously on the move. As the time passed and I gradually recuperated, I moved slowly from one neighbourhood and street to another, unexpectedly and belatedly noticing the steely, bold beauty of Oslo's autumnal landscapes. In the breaks between Vigeland and beer and Munch and beer and Viking relics, I'd hike up the leg of my pants and inspect the amazing transformation of the huge bruise, as the solid black of its original incarnation gave way to the startling beauty of its aubergine purples, mellow mauves, dusky blues and pink-inflected yellows. Inspired, I asked a friend to take some photos to preserve this transmogrification. Some of Morten's severely gorgeous pictures in this collection are like that bruise – a record of transient and unexpected beauty, often captured at its very starkest. Blurred figures, smeared lights, desolate streets and the austere outlines of modernist buildings offer a succint legend of the city in motion, often devoid of any human presence. At times, a portion of a startling profile or the curve of a woman's body vanishing beyond a street corner confront these bold, self-contained cityscapes with an arresting human protagonist. Other photos proffer visions of Oslo's thriving nightlife: your typical music venues and their nocturnal inhabitants are suddenly rendered piquant by the flash of Mortie's camera, manifestly animated by the triple intoxicant of music, spirits and pheromones, as late night euphoria melts into early morning exhaustion. Yet other images selected in this volume present the viewer with the unadorned prettiness of natural landscapes, no humans or human-made artefacts present to disctract us from the lucent purity of the vision. Morten's latest offering, in its sparing handsomeness, mirrors my own observations of the city, random and fragmentary as they have always been. The pictures that follow are both Every-city and singularly Oslo. Behold and enjoy.
Snowflake (from the book Black and Blue)
Exhibition Team
Curators: Sandra Križić Roban and Vanja Žanko
Lauba team: Ria Ivandić, Nambi Kezić, Anamarija Montak
Technical support: Jure Strunje, Dominik Markušić
Translation: Zana Šaškin
Proofreading (eng): Susan Jakopec
Below are some photos from the exhibition.