Paal Audestad
The award-winning photographer Paal Audestad has worked as a photographer since he was 17 years old. After graduation at the Norwegian Press Photographer School in -89 he has worked for Norwegian newspapers like Dagsavisen, VG and in later years as freelance photographer for Aftenposten´s A-Magasinet.
Audestad´s interest in music led him to work with bands and performers. He has taken press and cover images for notable bands and performers such as DumDum Boys, Raga Rockers, Sivert Høyem, Skambankt, Janove Ottesen and Kaizers Orchestra.
Audestad has also taken a number of study trips. Among those are many to Tsjernobyl, site of the most serious nuclear power plant accident in the world (1986). This is documented in his series Chernobyl Legacy and partly also in Urban Nature.
WORK
Apart from the music industry, investigating places and it´s people and history is also among Audestad´s passions.
Empty rooms and a rusty ferris wheel at an amusement park, a gas mask hanging from a hook, old posters of political boasts and nature taking over parking lots and buildings. It all tells stories of time passing. Of industry, culture and many also the broken hope of a prosperous future for the people who once lived there.
Cars are also among Audestad´s favourite motives, whether he finds new ones parked along his walking routes through Oslo or old ones in a garage or behind a house left to rust and decay.
Symbols of human activity, signs of what is or once was important, seem to be a leading motive in his works. Audestad is mapping his surroundings, and when doing so he transforms simple everyday motives into art. His photos are not merely documentation of reality; they reflect a feeling of uncertainty and ambiguousness and make us ask what we actually see.
Many of the photos our gallery has on display are taken by Polaroid camera on field trips. Being exposed to moist, debris, wind or sun, the result is a picture surface that reflects both the motive and the situation in which it’s taken.
ARTIST:
Paal Audestad
CATEGORY:
Photography
Photography of the year 2014, The Norwegian Press Photographers Association
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Kontroll på kontinentet: Historia om Kaizers Orchestra (The Kaizers Orchestra History) (with Jan Zahl), Tiden Norsk Forlag (2006)
Blitzregn 02-12 (with Terje Winterstø Røthing), Cappelen Damm (2012)
Tenk som en rockestjerne (Think Like a Rock Star) (with Ståle Økland), Publicom (2012)
Krefter – Åtte fortellinger (Forces – Eight stories, with Ola Henmo), Gyldendal (2013)
