Copenhagen - There are photographers who can become famous on the basis of only a few pictures, and Kåre Kivijärvi (1938-91) is one of these. His name rings Finnish, but he is a Norwegian with Finnish roots. He is a photographer’s photographer, and despite the recognition he gained in his native country, especially posthumously, his work has never been exhibited outside of Norway. This will now happen for the first time at the Museum of Photographic Art, Brandts Odense.  On exhibition until 9 April, 2007. Finn Thrane, Curator.

Kåre Kivijärvi’s reputation was founded in the 1950s and 60s. He studied with Otto Steinert at the Folkwangsschule in Germany and was influenced by his Subjektive Fotografie, but found the style too formalistic. Instead, in 1959, his final year at the school, he accepted the offer to document the inhospitable conditions of life for the fishermen of the Arctic Ocean. These pictures engrave themselves on your memory once you have seen them. The contrasts are sharp, the description subordinate to a compelling atmosphere that takes the story from the purely descriptive into the realm of the existential. The drama is not just that of the fishermen’s unequal battle against a raging sea; it is about the struggle for a meaning in life with death as the adversary – the Flying Dutchman captured in photography. These photographs were shot over a period of years and constantly elaborated and varied. At this point his travels also took him south, to France and Spain, eastward to Finland and Russia, and north to Greenland. But gradually, around the mid-seventies, his explosive creativity seems to have been exhausted, and he devoted the rest of his life to fighting for improved conditions for photography generally in Norway, and to making copies of  and perfecting his own photographic oeuvre. He died in 1991, after a prolonged illness.

The exhibition will be shown concurrently with the presentation of Press Photo of the Year, both on view from Friday, 2 March. On that date, at 3 p.m., there will be a joint opening of Monumental Melancholia  and Last Train to Beechwood, a PLATFORM exhibition of works by the young Danish photographer Kirsten Simonsen.