“Tell the world about us”: New exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center

“Tell the world about us” is an exhibition about lost liberty and human dignity captured through the lens of the renowned Norwegian documentary photographer Rune Eraker.

In 2001, photographer Rune Eraker was in Colombia to document the conditions under which political prisoners were being held. In a moment when the guards were not looking, one of the prisoners managed to thrust a note through the bars of his cell and give it to Eraker. The note said simply: “Tell the world about us”. It is this plea that has now become an exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.

“Tell the world about us” is about lost liberty and human dignity. Eraker has met people who have been forced into exile, like Edward Snowden and the Dalai Lama; women in Latin America, who have been jailed for murder after suffering a miscarriage or still-birth; members of the LGBT community in Russia, who must hide their true selves; and young girls in Nairobi who have been raped and brutally assaulted. All these people have been robbed of their liberty but are still fighting to maintain their dignity and integrity.

“The appeal from that prisoner in Colombia has gnawed at me for many years,” says Rune Eraker. “I have felt an urgent need to speak up about the people who are rotting in prisons all over the place, and who have been forgotten by an entire world.”

Eraker has travelled to 15 different countries over a number of years to take pictures for the exhibition. His imposing black & white portraits are accompanied by texts written by journalist Linda Hove Strand. In connection with the exhibition, visitors will also have the opportunity to engage in the work Amnesty is doing to protect human rights around the globe. This year, it is 70 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed, but those rights are still being abused in country after country every single day. The Nobel Peace Center’s executive director Liv Tørres believes it is important to turn a spotlight on people whose human rights have been violated.

“People in that situation often have only a single hope: that the world knows and cares about them, and that their stories live on. It gives them a feeling that they still mean something and that they have not ceased to exist.”

To coincide with the exhibition, a book entitled “Tell the world about us”, containing Eraker’s photographs and Strand’s texts, is being published by Forlaget Press. Members of the media and the general public are welcome to attend the exhibition’s official opening and book launch at the Nobel Peace Center on Thursday, 13 September, at 7pm. The exhibition will be on show from 14 September 2018 until 15 January 2019.

To arrange interviews and/or an advance viewing, please contact the Nobel Peace Center’s director of information Ingvill Bryn Rambøl at: ibr@nobelpeacecenter.org or mobile phone: +47 924 52 944.