Lundi 21 Mars 2016 11:44:34 par Annabelle Lafeuil dans Expositions

In her latest series, SHORT STORIES, Anja Niemi presents 140 sheets of peel-apart Polaroids. For 12 months she worked solely with a 1970s Polaroid Press camera. In an effort to work on something that would be slow to make and time-consuming to look at, she produced around 500 Polaroids, and from them edited down and created eight short stories containing fictional characters, objects, landscapes and interiors - all in some way connected to each other.

This series is significant now that Fujifilm has announced the end of production of the last peel-apart film.

© Anja Niemi

Previously Niemi created a series based on an object without ever including the actual object. This time she starts off by photographing the content of the Beauty Counselor suitcase - that led to her series Darlene and Me in 2014. Then she created a new portrait of Darlene as the Beauty Counselor. The case filled with beauty samples from 1959 was the start of creating characters and stories based on objects.

The next image was of a bank deposit bag with the caption, This bag should be returned to UNION BANK. The bag was clearly never returned and led her to create a story about the unlawful character named Mona. Whilst the chapter 'Susan' includes photographs of surgical instruments, a frozen lake, a set of acrylic teeth and a portrait of an ice skater. The stories start off in the same way all inspired by pre-owned objects. Rhinestone lashes, a police booking sheet with fingerprints, a Russian gun holster and six 1940s dolls with loose limbs, all led to a character and a chapter in her collection of tragicomic tales.

© Anja Niemi

Anja continues to work in the same way as before, photographing, staging and acting out the characters on her own.

Born in Norway in 1976, Anja Niemi studied at London College of Printing and Parsons School of Design in Paris and New York. She is now considered ‘one of the most compelling modern artists working today‘ and ‘one of Europe’s most talked-about young artists’.

Anja Niemi is exclusively represented by The Little Black Gallery who exhibited her critically acclaimed series: Darlene & Me (2015), Starlets (2013), and Do Not Disturb (2012) in London, and Photographing In Costume in New York (2016). Darlene & Me was also exhibited at Photo London (2015). View all Anja's artworks here.

© Anja Niemi

To be premiered at Photo London from 19-22 May
and then at The Little Black Gallery from 26 May - 16 June 2016

A book of the same name will be published by Jane & Jeremy