Tom Sandberg »Tom Sandberg«

Galerie Nordenhake has the pleasure to present an exhibition by the Norwegian photographer Tom Sandberg. Sandberg uses the language of straight black and white photography with which he manages to capture traditional subject matter with incredibly seductive power.

Tom Sandberg works well within a tradition referred to as 'straight photography.' This term describes the strong tendency to in the past century to cultivate what are considered photography's specific aesthetic qualities. An interest in the medium's unique characteristics and what differentiates it from other media has been one of modernism's most notable endeavours. This focus and discipline have been crucial in establishing photography's credibility and status as art.

In Tom Sandberg's work, such concerns have not resulted in a strict, fundamentalist practice. Rather, clarity in the motive, a resistance to cropping negatives, and an unpretentious developing technique that does not use the darkroom to accentuate qualities not otherwise present are the approaches Tom Sandberg has adopted from this tradition. There is a kind of objectivity in his images, which is not to say that he is a puritan. Sandberg uses normal format film and a handheld camera. He does not stage his subject matter, which he seeks out with an artist's sensitivity, rather than a photojournalist's documentary interests. The element of something veiled and strange in Sandberg's photographs does not stem from clever technical finesse, but from his awareness from of and search for a complex visual reality - a reality that is not always as crystal clear and immobile as a mountain range on a sunny day.

Tom Sandberg sees things in glimpses, at an angle and on the move. He varies between approaching the motive head on, as in some of the portraits and reading the world in the margins, through the skin of surfaces and in the folds.

Tom Sandberg was born in 1953; he currently lives and works in Oslo. This is his first solo exhibition at Galerie Nordenhake.