Kåre Kivijärvi – Artist with a Camera

Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK) is devoting the upcoming exhibition of works from its collection to the photographic artist Kåre Kivijärvi. Kivijärvi is primarily known as a master of black and white photography, and was the first Norwegian photographer to win nationwide acclaim as a visual artist.

-HOK’s collection contains a number of key works by Kivijärvi which, along with works on loan from The Museum of Reconstruction in Hammerfest and Norway’s Sami Parliament, have been brought together to show the full breadth of his oeuvre in the exhibition Kåre Kivijärvi – Artist with a Camera, says Tone Hansen, the art centre’s director.

In addition to iconic black and white images depicting work and daily life in Northern Norway, the exhibition will show films, publications and archive material on loan from, among others, the National Library of Norway and the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation from Finland, relating to Kivijärvi’s work as both a press photographer and an artist.

-Kivijärvi’s story is closely linked to HOK. He was highlighted in a wide-ranging retrospective exhibition here in 1985, and again in 1989 when an important catalogue of Kivijärvi’s works was also published, says HOK director Tone Hansen.

Photojournalist and artist

Kåre Kivijärvi (1938-1991) was born in Hammerfest. He became interested in photography at an early age, acquiring his first camera when he was 12 years old. In the late 1950s, he studied photography under Otto Steinert at the School of Arts and Crafts in Saarbrucken and Essen in Germany. In 1960, he completed his studies and returned to Norway. He made a living as a freelance photographer for picture magazines in Norway and Finland, while he gradually established himself as a photographic artist.

-Kåre Kivijärvi was born a ‘Kven’ [a Finnic ethnic minority in Norway], and retained strong bonds to the North Calotte region throughout his life. He also had connections to Finnish culture and artistic circles, and demonstrated a powerful sense of kinship with the people of the High North and their everyday lives, and was keen to represent these communities and ethnic minorities, explains the exhibition’s curator Ana María Bresciani.

Rarely seen works and newly commissioned piece

Part of the exhibition is devoted to archive material which shows Kivijärvi’s close ties to the Kven and Sami populations. This is particularly relevant in light of the fact that 2017 marks the centenary of the first Sami Congress.

The material also includes documentation from Kåre Kivijärvi’s travels as a photojournalist to places like Greenland and the Himalayas in the 1960s. By this point he was also working with colour photography.

In addition, the photographic presentation contains a series of pictures of trawlers at work on the Svalbard fishing banks.

-The trawler fishing photos were taken between 1959 and 1962 on assignment for the frozen food brand Findus. Some of these photos have subsequently been acknowledged as high points in Kivijärvi’s career. Up until now, The Museum of Reconstruction in Hammerfest is the only place where the entire series has been put on public display, says Ms Bresciani.

When Kåre Kivijärvi started his career in photography, the medium was largely considered an aid to documentation and the sharing of information. However, through his works, Kivijärvi also contributed to the acceptance of photograph as art.

-Kivijärvi challenged the premise of photography as a mass medium, and experimented with darkroom techniques to create his unique photographic expression – full of hard contrasts and radical framing. He quickly became aware of photography’s poetic qualities, and created photographic art that lay far beyond the documentary tradition, Ms Bresciani concludes.

The pictures in the exhibition are accompanied by a specially commissioned work by the Norwegian musician Geir Jenssen (1962), better known as Biosphere. The work is a 20-minute long piece of music entitled Berg, which will start playing on the hour in the exhibition space.

Kåre Kivijärvi – Artist with a Camera is the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter’s exhibition of works from its collection for the coming year.

The exhibition opens on 31 March and will be on display until end 2017.