Ylva Friberg

A photograph shows a woman running down a deserted road in a Swedish autumn landscape. One cannot really tell whether she is running away from something (the camera) or towards something (maybe the tiny car that can be glimpsed on the horizon), the picture gives nothing away. This is a photograph by Ylva Friberg. She mainly photographs her motifs in and around her garden, they are private snapshots from her private sphere. By almost completely avoiding working serially Friberg attempts to avoid a narrative element in her images. The first Kodak camera was put on the market in 1888 and was developed into a cheaper form in 1901. As it became cheap and easy to take photographs, a new phenomenon became common: the snapshot. A snapshot is quickly made, snap, mostly used for memory, festive occasions, holidays and other events lying outside of the everyday. The snapshot documents, as a photograph it is seen as a 'window to the world', as truthful. At the same time it is per definition as personal as memory itself, it has a strange sort of privateness and exclusivity - it might tell a story longer than a thousand words, but this is only known to the chosen few. Therefore a mystery arises when the snapshot becomes public; the spectator comes up against a wall, and the fragmentary nature of the photograph becomes visible. In her often very beautiful photographs, Friberg is fascinated by the possiblity of her medium to catch the fragment and give it an aura, a mystique residing exactly in the fact that it is a fragment, a small corner of the world that, without explanation, has been chosen by the photographer as worthy for survival. Here is no insistence on any window to the world, on the contrary, the images are private snapshots that on purposefully tell no story. The spectator will have to create his or her own story about the images, but there is no possibility to decide if it is contained in the photograph of if it only exists in the mind of the spectator. But this is exactly the fascinating aspect of Friberg’s work, on the one hand the large formats invite the spectator into her private world, but on the other hand the moment-fragments give nothing away about what came before and what will follow.

Cv

Born: 1973 in Stockholm, lives and works in Malmö

Education:
1995-2000 Konsthögskolan i Malmö
1998 Edinburgh College Of Art
1994-1995 Örebrokonstskola

Exhibitions:
2010 Polis, polis, potatismos, Malmö Konsthall
2009 Vacuumfält, Sjöbo Konsthall
2008 No, No, No There`s no limits Galleri Signal, Malmö
2007 Solo exhibition, Wuthering Heights, Malmö
2006 Malm 2, Malmö Konsthall
Konstkompis presents, Wuthering Heights, Malmö
2005 SISU Kunstverein Rugen, Germany
Publication (pages), Lund Konsthall
Malmö Art Academy 10 yeras, Rooseum, Malmö
2004 SISU Kabusa Konsthall, Glemmingebro
Vårsalongen, Liljevalch Konsthall, Stockholm

Grants:
Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation,1999

Represented:
Statens konstråd
Region Skåne

Publications:
Publikation(pages) www.rollon.net, 2005