Dissapearances

Group exhibition at Fotografisk Center, 2023. Text by Signe Kahr Sørensen

(…) The works in the exhibition address disappearances in various ways, both materially, in the form of investigations of photography as a physical object, its materiality and transience, as well as thematically, in the form of disappearances of people, objects and places. Moreover, the exhibition highlights the way in which disappearances and absences are also connected to our photographic image culture in a broader social context, both physically, as in collections and archives, and digitally, as in technology such as AI and image manipulation.

Notes (17.08.01) by Andreas Albrectsen is based on a private snapshot taken by the artist himself from the top of the World Trade Center in New York on 17 August 2001. In the foreground of the image are the rooftops of New York’s Wall Street financial district. The image is scaled up to a size matching the dimensions of the window through which it was taken and printed on 1,750 post-it notes hung on the wall. Over the course of the exhibition period the work will slowly disintegrate and the motif will disappear as the glue on the post-it notes loses its grip causing the notes to fall down onto the floor. The work points to the transience of photography and memory and suggests disappearance on several levels: both in terms of the temporary nature of the work and its physical collapse over time in the course of the exhibition, as well as a concrete disappearance in real life since the subject of the work and the view from the original World Trade Center no longer exist.