Fotobookfestival Oslo 2023
Fotobokfestival Oslo 2023, titled Index, deals with photography’s role in classification and the photographs’ characteristics as objective evidence. The photograph classifies the world as we know it; people, events, geographies and cultures. A physical object, or a specific moment in history, which is owned only by those present, becomes the subject of a collective narrative through the photograph.
Unmanageable systems are made tangible through photography’s inherent technological properties; collecting, measuring, categorising, indexing and classifying. The festival highlights the artist as a researcher, who obsessively collects and assembles information, classifies troublesome systems and creates new structures in order to make historical accounts materially manageable.
Guided by an interest in these systems, the artists presented at Fotobokfestival Oslo 2023 incorporate extensive research within their photobooks. They use the photographic narrative as a means of approaching current and historical contexts in an endeavour to convey these in a visual perceptible form for the public. Themes explored within the photobooks range from obsessive collection, geopolitics, taxonomy, political agreements, reconstruction, war, technology, perception, science, pseudoscience, surveillance, public secrecy to the hidden and the undocumented.
The festival brings together Norwegian and international artists, speakers, writers and publishers, and presents exhibitions, book fair, seminars, artist talks, workshops, book launches and satellite events. The festival’s main arena for 2023 is to be announced, together with a range of satellite arenas around Oslo.
