Nordic photography space 2013

The Foundation of Cultural and Informational Programs FotoDepartament is a non-profit platform, which organizes exhibition and educational projects on contemporary photography, has just become one of the winners of the spring session of the Nordic-Russian NGO Exchange programme provided by Nordic Council of Ministers in Saint-Petersburg (Norden). Project “Nordic photography space-2013”, running by FotoDepartament under this program, includes a trip and meetings with 5 photography organizations from Sweden, Denmark and Norway, non-profit or/and artists-run. In the end of October 2013 FotoDepartament will run a conference dedicated to the results of this trip. There will be presented a booklet and a short film about the entire trip. And also the guests of the event will be representatives of the two Nordic organizations.

The trip of 4-member team took place from 28 July to 6 August 2013 and was very intensive geographically (Gothenburg, Malmo, Copenhagen, Aarhus and Oslo) and professionally. One of the most important goals of the trip was the discussing an idea of holding a joint exhibition of Russian and Scandinavian photographers. It is planning to be hold in June 2014 in Saint-Petersburg, by a group of curators from partner organizations, which FotoDepartament visited. Discussing focused not only on the exhibition plans, but on the experience exchange in different domains. Some of them are: artists’ organizing of presentation spaces, unity of the communities of photography and art organizations in Nordic countries, examples of joint projects, educational initiatives, publishing an albums and magazines about photography, expansion of photography into the city, to the bigger audience, practices in photography field as a part of modern visual culture and contemporary art.

Besides meetings, FotoDepartament’s team visited a lot of museums of contemporary art, book stores, independent centers and art spaces, which unite different galleries, publishers, creative offices and specialists. FotoDepartament is sure, that this trip has great results. This is a good start for a new format of relations and collaboration between curators and photographers from Russia and Nordic countries. It will be the first time, when they will work together on the same theme and its realization as a big exhibition.