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22/4/2007

Myne Soe-Pedersen

Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam

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The Danish artist/photographer Myne Søe-Pedersen says about her work: "Photography is usually used to record "what was there". My photographs concentrate on that "which is not there anymore"." A more compact way of describing her work is hardly thinkable. In the past her photo's emphasized especially the intimate history of a single object or a silent place. The viewer could daydream about a possible narration or about an event which may be read from traces on an object or left behind in a room. For example a photo of a worn out book cover or of a discoloured wall with an old nail, on which once apparently hung a painting.

In her new work there is no more melancholy. Instead of romanticizing her subject she has pinned down that "which is not there anymore" in a more factual way. She has photographed traces caused by hard labour of printers in a printery. Therefore one detects a more sober subject with limited possibilities to interprete and daydream. It is a more common sense field in which she has taken her well-thought out pictures.

Next to three recently made large photoworks Myne Søe-Pedersen has installed small square pairs of photo's of newspapers from Europe, the Middle East and the United States of America, photographed from its side. These are therefore unrecognizable and only a black square photo with the name and date next to the image helps the viewer to find out about the name of the newspaper. This could be understood as a refined answer to the sober conceptual date paintings of On Kawara from the sixties.

In the front of the gallery Myne Søe-Pedersen's first DVD "Newspapers", 2007, has its premiere. Newspapers pictured from aside and dates/names of newspapers fade in and out, suggesting that time passes by while hardly anything essential changes.

Myne Søe-Pedersen is the very first winner of the Steenbergen Stipendium which was awarded to her in 2001. The report of the jury says:

"Myne Søe-Pedersen receives the Steenbergen Stipendium 2001 on behalf of her clear, consistent way of working. Photography is about dealing with that which one encounters. On the contrary Myne concentrates on that which was there once, and which is gone now. She examines how time and remembrance can be captured in photographic images. Her research for this and the concept development is as important as the final photo itself. The answers she finds create new impulses for a next project.

Her final exam consisted of three parts. In one project she sent undeveloped photopaper from her holiday address to her home and light, time and handling of the postal services defined the final image. In another project she photographed the backside of book covers without typography. In this way we as a viewer noticed only after a while that the picture was not about a photographed landscape. Furthermore she photographed sweeped blackboards. That which was once there, is still seeable only in bits and pieces. The mystery of remembrance is shaped by her exquisite, subdued images. The jury was touched by this clear work which for a final exam is of an unprecedented level of balance and maturity."

Galerie van Gelder
Planciusstraat 9 A - Amsterdam

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