BJØRKA

Bjørkamedlem Jói Kjartans stiller ut på Gerðarsafn, Kópavogur Art Museum under The Icelandic Photo Festival 2025.

In Jói’s photographs there is love and energy, coexistence and chaos, a time in a life, flash and sharp focus. Hildur (The End) is a personal story where we witness the photographer’s life through his eyes. The work pays tribute to his 12-year relationship with Hildur, a quarter of the photographer’s life, perhaps asking whether we can, through photography, put ourselves in his shoes and travel with him through this period in his life. To document this time, he uses a point-and-shoot film camera that quickly captures the moment, the film giving the colours added value, this is the type of camera that grandmothers and party animals have used for candid shots for decades. Many of the photographs are semi- arranged, the subject is often aware of the camera, reacting by quickly posing, without the moment being staged.

Jói’s photographs teeter on the edge, not quite belonging to any one category of photography. Their aesthetic references family albums and images on social media where people show friends and family moments from their lives. But the version of life that the photographs depict is too raw to really belong there, more intimate than we are used to seeing in photo albums. Jói also tips his hat to the American masters of colour in documentary photography of the last century, such as Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, while he is not as formal as they are. For here there is a dash of restlessness in these photos, some sort of Icelandic attention deficit or variable winds. They are a documentation of the artist’s own life. He is not here as a witness but as a participant, and we sense his presence in each and every shot.

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