On 7 March, the exhibition Snow and Rain Shall Pass will open at the Nobel Prize Museum. A selection of Karin Alfredsson’s photographs as well as her short film Arctic Ocean – A Journey to the North Pole will be on display together with poems by Jon Fosse, the 2023 Nobel Prize laureate in literature. In connection with the opening of the exhibition, Karin Alfredsson is releasing her first book with a series of 45 photographs from the northern and Arctic regions of Scandinavia.
The title of the exhibition was borrowed from that of Karin Alfredsson’s ongoing photographic suite, in which she depicts places where the human presence has been minimal and has made hardly any impression. She is interested in climate change and, as an artist and photographer, would like to help generate engagement in environmental issues through photographs of landscapes, seas and lakes. In recent years, she has received a lot of attention for her photographs with their painterly qualities.
Karin Alfredsson has found a kindred spirit in Norwegian author and Nobel Prize laureate Jon Fosse. In his poems we encounter images of forests, mountains, lakes, darkness and light, in the face of which human smallness and vulnerability emerge. Two of Fosse’s poems are part of the exhibition: The mountain holds its breath and It darkens. The text selections have been chosen through a dialogue between Karin Alfredsson and Jon Fosse.
“When I take a picture, I need to wait for the right moment. I go out into roadless countryside where nature is at peace, usually in late autumn and winter. On foot or on skis. I have to land in that place, but also in myself. It’s about finding a condition in myself where I meet nature. Only then can I take my photographs”, says Karin Alfredsson.
“Art that is devoted to landscapes has become increasingly interesting due to climate change. It’s a great pleasure to be able to show Karin Alfredsson’s magnificent photographs together with Jon Fosse’s texts. The exhibition makes us stop and think about how we want our future to be,” says Erika Lanner, Director of the Nobel Prize Museum.
About the film Arctic Ocean – A Journey to the North Pole
In 2018, Karin Alfredsson signed on as a field assistant on the Swedish icebreaker Oden’s research expedition. Up on deck in the cold, she filmed and photographed ice floes, open expanses, sky and sea with her camera. She also recorded the sounds of wind, ice and the Odin’s engines. The film was then given a soundtrack and was set to music by composer Sebastian Öberg.
Karin Alfredsson was born in Jämtland, northern Sweden, and grew up on the island of Frösön. Snow and Rain Shall Pass is the title of her ongoing photographic series. Alfredsson can spend long periods in roadless countryside that she travels to on skis or on foot. There she takes time to get to know the place and await the right conditions for her pictures. The photographs are from northernmost Sweden and Norway as well as from the North Pole.
Jon Fosse was born in Western Norway and currently lives in Norway and Austria. He is an author and playwright. Since his debut in 1983, he has published some 40 books in various genres that have been translated into more than 60 languages. His plays have been performed all over the world. In 2023, Jon Fosse was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”.