Artist
Sofie Flinth
Sofie Flinth (b. 1996) is a Copenhagen-based visual artist with a BA in Art & Design from Amsterdam’s Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Working primarily with portrait and staged photography, her works touch upon themes of nostalgia, vanity and manipulation. By combining storytelling with everyday life, Flinth creates semi-docu scenarios featuring herself and the women close to her. Her projects explore the imaginary, asking to what extent images portray reality. In 2020, Flinth’s graduation work When the Sun Sets was part of two group exhibitions in Amsterdam; one at Galerie Ron Mandos and another at Foam Fotografiemuseum. In 2022, she was named as one of the Fresh Eyes Talents with her ongoing series, A Million Dollar View.
A Million dollar view
My project explores identity through photography. It’s a portrait of a woman afraid of getting older who begins to redefine herself as a character.
Henny is her name. She was born Hendrika Catharina Louise. She also had a ”show name”, for whenever she hosted fashion shows in her boutique. That name was Juliette, because it sounded French and she liked that. Henny lives on the 6th floor of a concrete apartment building. She lives alone with Bella, her dog – her husband passed away five years ago. She and her husband moved in because of the apartment’s ”million-dollar ocean view.” They wanted to feel free, she told me one afternoon, while smoking a cigarette in her kitchen. Henny’s late husband worked as a portrait photographer and she as a fashion stylist. After introducing me to this part of her life, Henny and I started working together, to capture a piece of her fabulous past. We slowly created a space that allowed us to explore her as a character – styling her in her old clothes and embracing her perception of herself. With Henny as stylist and me as photographer – reminiscent of the dynamic she shared with her husband, Peter – the meetings became playful explorations of their shared past.
Henny does not only perform as my model but also functions as a collaborator. Together we confront the perceived conformity and vulnerability of the older generation by capturing Henny as the brave character she is.
Swedish Susanne Fagerlund (b. 1969) completed her MFA at Valand Academy in 2021, but nevertheless brings a lot of artistic experience with her. Fagerlund is selected for Futures 2023 on the basis of her unique artistic expression as well as her both sculptural and interdisciplinary work with the photographic medium, which i.a. uses natural history research, artificial intelligence and glitch feminism as a prism for her work. With The Doppelgänger Series – Mourning for what is being lost, Fagerlund tackles our relationship and belonging to nature. She has an intriguing utopian approach to AI as a tool to create a new visual archive, a ‘digital ecosystem’ of past and speculative future images of plants and species. An integration of AI which is interesting to discuss and unfold in the context of FUTURES.
The Danish photo-based artist Sofie Flinth (b.1996), educated at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, has been selected on the basis of her portraits, which place themselves in the tension between staging and realism. In the project A Million Dollar View, Sofie Flinth explores the vanity of an elderly woman and the perception she has of herself. Flinth's portraits are completely devoid of the sensitivity that is often seen in documentary portraits, but acquire an almost advertising-like aesthetic through her work with themes such as nostalgia and vanity. Her photographic expression can be described as consequent, radical and relevant, and it also emphasizes the humor that her work contains. Sofie Flinth is an exciting example of a Danish artist who is exploring and expanding what portrait photography can and should be.
Danish photojournalist Mikkel Hørlyck (b. 1990) is a classic documentary photographer who works with social issues. In the long term project Jørgen, a Mystery, his intimate and personal story becomes universal and relevant through the drug addict Jørgen's fight for life, his love for his fellow men and his continuing dreams. All told sublimely through recognizable everyday situations, which can only be portrayed by a photographer who really takes an interest in his protagonist and decides to spend a long time on his photography. Mikkel Hørlyck's photography has an exceptionally distinct expression, which invites the viewers into the story and inevitably engages them. An expression that deserves greater international response with Futures. Hørlyck uses his talent to put global issues, social injustice on the agenda. From intimate projects like Jørgen or the Moldovan orphan children in The Neglected to the most recent project The Mercilessness Of The Sea which is part of his long term work on refugees.
Italian visual artist Giulia Mangione (b.1987) is based in Oslo and has resided in the Nordics for several years. With a MA at Bergen Arts Academy and studies in Advanced Visual Storytelling at the School of Media and Journalism in Aarhus, she has a well founded, broad and still curious approach to photography. She adds her feminine touch to the usually masculine genre of photographic road trip. In her project The Fall she manages to portray the prepper culture in a way that is both documentary and surreal at the same time. Each photograph stands as an individual work, and in the context it becomes an exciting, and complete visual style.
Norwegian Jonas Yang Tislevoll (b. 1993) educated from Bilder Nordic School of Photography in 2021 has presented a personal project with a highly relevant subject matter by “Take care of yourself son, your mom loves you”. Dealing with matters such as identity, belonging and women’s rights and adoption in South Korea he is contributing to an important and underlit agenda. His work dares to give space to few but meaningful details, leaving the audience with an atmosphere of an undefined static tension. An atmosphere which is underlined but the sometimes radical cropping The project presents a strong complementary interaction between the long texts and the images which is a strength and a potential Tislevoll could challenge on an international scale through FUTURES’.