This year Denmark will be the Guest of Honour at the Budapest Spring Festival.

Under the auspices of the Festival and their country’s guest status, four Danish photographers will exhibit their works at two venues: Nessim Gallery and Budapest Gallery from March 24. The exhibitions are the result of our cooperation with the Danish Cultural Institute.

The exhibition at Budapest Gallery by Per Bak Jensen and Ebbe Stub Wittrup is organized around the meaning and display of landscapes. Per Bak Jensen is a decisive figure of Danish photography, a regular exhibitor for over 30 years at numerous venues from Houston to Marseille, Tokyo to Vienna. Budapest Gallery is displaying a selection of his works created in the last ten years. Per Bak Jensen considers the countryside being a force allied with time, never rushing forward, never lagging behind.

The dignity of countryside and time is embodied in huge pictures. The work Wandering Rock was nominated for the BMW prize at the Paris Photo in 2009.

As for Ebbe Stub Witrup, a box of found slides from a hiking trip in Norway in the late 1950’ies creates a conceptual framework for his Presumed Reality project. The use of digital tools has made some details of the original pictures sharper or hazier. All the pictures hold their viewer in suspense, unsure if the depicted scenes are real, as the photos simultaneously display the uncertain and the reinforcing elements.

One of the series’ pictures was among the 10 best candidates for the BMW Prize at the ParisPhoto exhibition in 2007. Ebbe Stub Wittrup is represented in many major public and private collections. Ebbe Stub Witrup – Preasumed Reality#1Nessim Gallery will exhibit two series of photographs by Trine Søndergaard and Torben Eskerod.

Trine Søndergaard’s first-ever series won the Albert Renger-Patzsch award upon its publication in 2000. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, and is represented in major public and private collections. Trine Søndergaard has also exhibited and published extensively with the Danish artist Nicolai Howalt. Their collaborations include the series How to Hunt published by ArtPeople in 2005 and winning the special prize of ParisPhoto in 2006.

The pieces of the new series Monochrome Portraits feature indescribable colours. Each portrait features a different shade, a delicately separate entity. Silvery purples and transparent greys. A definite sign in which the face may appear. Who sees what in his own portrait? The outlines of the head, the colour: that is all. This is Trine Sondergaard, the photographer waiting for the moment when a tiny motion forces us to face ourselves in the very instant when we feel identical with ourselves and the universe.

The other Danish photographer, Torben Eskerod, makes quite different portraits. From the tombstones of Campo Verano in Rome he collected the pictures characterizing the deceased. Here are the proud officials, grave-faced mothers, smiling charmers and dove-eyed women in love. We will never know why it was these pics and not others that went on the tombstones. Nor do we know how old these people were when they were buried.

What we know, however, is how they are remembered. We can see the result of the discussions in the course of which family and friends decided which photo to take to the monumental mason. We can see these mortals were proudly loved.

Hardly any of them are middle-aged, not to say old. These tombstone photos depict mostly young people. They either died young or their families wanted to remember them as young, preserving the memory of their proudest years."

Source: Nessim Galéria
1061 – Budapest, 1/4 Paulay Ede u. 10.
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