Exhibitions: Ädno / Älven / The River
Photography / archive / Video / installation
2019-2025
Ädno / The River / The River is an installation with photographs, archive material, video and books that all touch on and examine the Lule River. In 2017, I began working and reflecting on the river that I grew up next to. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the river valley has undergone a transformation from having Europe's most dramatic rapids and waterfalls to becoming a tranquil industrial landscape. The work with the river was to become a photo book where my journey along the river valley, visits to the 15 power stations, would be the guidelines for the photographic essay that would become the content of the book. It has since become an exhibition and has been shown in several places, both nationally in Sweden and abroad.
In the photographs and archival materials, we encounter power lines and switchgear placed between primeval forest, still water, rocks and mountains. We see no people, only traces of them, the landscapes are the focus. The photographs are accompanied by parts of her research material, which in their own narrative create a kind of caption for the photographs and the video on the wall. On a postcard you can read about which fish the sender in Porjus fished in the river in 1946, this is mixed with brochures from Vattenfall and Ernst Manker's powerful book from Akkajaure and Stora Sjöfallet, which was printed in 1941. Visitors are welcome to browse through books on the tables.
As a quiet reminder of the river's now most important mission, the monotonous sound that leaks out from the video in a TV on the wall - an electric humming from a switchboard near the Letsi power station.