Documenting places as they really are
Belonging and sense of place, or the lack of it, is expressed in place-conscious art. Per Berntsen is one of Norway’s most respected practitioners of fine art photography and has an extraordinary eye for revealing the nature of culture in modern place-making. Early in his career, Berntsen worked with landscape photography in the romantic tradition, influenced by American photographers like Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. After 1985, landscape photography had become routine and quite boring. Then he discovered New Topographics, which is a tradition and movement in photographic art named after the 1975 exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape in New York . Berntsens first work inspired by New Topographics was a project in 1987 together with three other photographers called Norsk Landskap, 1987 based upon a journey through Norway, actually covering most of Norway within three weeks in June that year. The result of the project was exhibited at Henie Onstad Art ...