Blasting the Language of Colonialism: Three Contemporary Photo-Books on Greenland

TY - JOUR

T1 - Blasting the Language of Colonialism

T2 - Three Contemporary Photo-Books on Greenland

AU - Sandbye, Mette

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - Throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, photography was among the main tools for communicating knowledge about Greenland to the rest of the world, not least to the Danish public. Photography was originally used by Arctic explorers as well as by the colonial system. With few exceptions, such as the documentary photographs and films of Jette Bang, the visual image transmitted through photography was highly stereotypical: ice and wild nature, peopled by tough sealers and hunters. Documentary photography and art in general, from Greenland as well as Denmark, usually confirmed this image. Recently, however, new narratives have begun emerging among contemporary artists, many of whom use photography in radically new ways to construct an alternative ‘ethno-aesthetics’, to use Pia Arke’s term. This article discusses three photography books, published almost simultaneously: Pia Arke’s Scoresbysundhistorier (2003)/Stories from Scoresbysund (2010), Jacob Aue Sobol’s Sabine (2004), and Julie Edel Hardenberg’s Den stille mangfoldighed/The Quiet Diversity (2005). It brings them together to show how they simultaneously follow recent developments in contemporary global art as well as step into the tradition of that most referential of media, photography, and manage to ‘blast’ this tradition from within, thereby representing an important renewal of the discourse of photography.

AB - Throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, photography was among the main tools for communicating knowledge about Greenland to the rest of the world, not least to the Danish public. Photography was originally used by Arctic explorers as well as by the colonial system. With few exceptions, such as the documentary photographs and films of Jette Bang, the visual image transmitted through photography was highly stereotypical: ice and wild nature, peopled by tough sealers and hunters. Documentary photography and art in general, from Greenland as well as Denmark, usually confirmed this image. Recently, however, new narratives have begun emerging among contemporary artists, many of whom use photography in radically new ways to construct an alternative ‘ethno-aesthetics’, to use Pia Arke’s term. This article discusses three photography books, published almost simultaneously: Pia Arke’s Scoresbysundhistorier (2003)/Stories from Scoresbysund (2010), Jacob Aue Sobol’s Sabine (2004), and Julie Edel Hardenberg’s Den stille mangfoldighed/The Quiet Diversity (2005). It brings them together to show how they simultaneously follow recent developments in contemporary global art as well as step into the tradition of that most referential of media, photography, and manage to ‘blast’ this tradition from within, thereby representing an important renewal of the discourse of photography.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Photography

KW - Postcolonialism

KW - Photo books

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1904-1594

VL - 14

SP - 66

EP - 89

JO - KULT. Postkolonial Temaserie

JF - KULT. Postkolonial Temaserie

ER -