Anna Strand
19 Aug - 19 Sep 2010
ANNA STRAND
Dear Nobody, I am tired of wanting to be somebody, now I also want to be Nobody
19 August – 19 September 2010
Anna Strand (born 1979) works with photography and text. Her staged photographs explore and challenge our perception of reality. She plays with scale and size or makes other small, subtle shifts that suddenly dislocate the world. What are my eyes actually seeing? For a dizzying moment the photographic image of reality questions reality itself.
Strand’s photographs are pure, almost sacred and clearly have a dreamlike quality. In dreams, reality is shaped by the subconscious – but doesn’t that also happen in normal circumstances? How much do our ingrained patterns and opinions govern our routine interpretation of everyday life? Strand tries to make us begin considering our own perception but also the limitations of language.
She deliberately introduces the written word as yet another parameter. The title is always part of the work. Words awaken images in us, just as images awaken words. Strand plays with words – their letters, similarities and combinations. She creates unexpected encounters between the image and the text – encounters that transform and enrich. When are words not enough? When does the image take up the narrative? The texts are both poetic and subtle, and sometimes become completely independent works. The following text is an example:
She was not two-dimensional as she had often wished. To calm her unease and structure her thoughts, she imagined herself as a simple geometric form.
Anna Strand likes to work in series with a clear scientific methodology. Several trials must be done in different ways in order to illuminate the inexplicability that permeates our existence.
In C-salen, Strand exhibits new works created specifically for this exhibition. She continues to explore how images create reality and change our life and our view on life. In a new approach, she also works with a kind of collage of images and texts. For the first time she uses someone else’s images in a work – photos of a woman’s life which Strand found in a second-hand bookshop. How do we try to keep a hold on life? Where do our memories begin and end – in the experience or in the photograph?
Anna Strand graduated in 2008 from the School of Photography at the University of Gothenburg. Her previous exhibition venues include Landskrona Museum and Galleri Ping Pong in Malmö. In 2005 she won the Robert Frank scholarship, in 2006 the City of Malmö cultural scholarship and in 2009 the Claës Lewenhaupt scholarship.
Dear Nobody, I am tired of wanting to be somebody, now I also want to be Nobody
19 August – 19 September 2010
Anna Strand (born 1979) works with photography and text. Her staged photographs explore and challenge our perception of reality. She plays with scale and size or makes other small, subtle shifts that suddenly dislocate the world. What are my eyes actually seeing? For a dizzying moment the photographic image of reality questions reality itself.
Strand’s photographs are pure, almost sacred and clearly have a dreamlike quality. In dreams, reality is shaped by the subconscious – but doesn’t that also happen in normal circumstances? How much do our ingrained patterns and opinions govern our routine interpretation of everyday life? Strand tries to make us begin considering our own perception but also the limitations of language.
She deliberately introduces the written word as yet another parameter. The title is always part of the work. Words awaken images in us, just as images awaken words. Strand plays with words – their letters, similarities and combinations. She creates unexpected encounters between the image and the text – encounters that transform and enrich. When are words not enough? When does the image take up the narrative? The texts are both poetic and subtle, and sometimes become completely independent works. The following text is an example:
She was not two-dimensional as she had often wished. To calm her unease and structure her thoughts, she imagined herself as a simple geometric form.
Anna Strand likes to work in series with a clear scientific methodology. Several trials must be done in different ways in order to illuminate the inexplicability that permeates our existence.
In C-salen, Strand exhibits new works created specifically for this exhibition. She continues to explore how images create reality and change our life and our view on life. In a new approach, she also works with a kind of collage of images and texts. For the first time she uses someone else’s images in a work – photos of a woman’s life which Strand found in a second-hand bookshop. How do we try to keep a hold on life? Where do our memories begin and end – in the experience or in the photograph?
Anna Strand graduated in 2008 from the School of Photography at the University of Gothenburg. Her previous exhibition venues include Landskrona Museum and Galleri Ping Pong in Malmö. In 2005 she won the Robert Frank scholarship, in 2006 the City of Malmö cultural scholarship and in 2009 the Claës Lewenhaupt scholarship.