6 MARCH - 17 APRIL
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“Narcissus examines the genre of landscape photography. After five years of contemplating the Landscape in a small region of Western Norway I ask: are we the true subject and landscape merely the environment from which we select forms that are either familiar or resonant?”
- Stuart Franklin, Narcissus, 2013
Stuart Franklin (born 1956), member of Magnum Photos since 1989, has photographed some of the most important news events of the 21st Century – from the massacre at Tiananmen Square to the Intifada – as well as producing many personal projects concerned primarily with man and the environment. Franklin’s work is characterised by a direct documentary-style combined with a strong personal vision. Since the 1990s he began to move away from news into documentary photography and has completed over twenty assignments for National Geographic.
The works presented in our online exhibition – Franklin’s second with The Fine Art Society – are part of Narcissus, a long-term project and book on Norway’s landscape first published in 2013 (Hatje Cantz). In 2009 Franklin bought a cabin on the remote island of Otrøya, in the region of Møre og Romsdal on the western coast of Norway. The plan was to spend time experiencing the landscape and take a break after three years as president of Magnum Photos.
Over the following two years, the small island and its surroundings became the focus of Franklin’s investigation into the nature of landscape photography. He came to realise that by photographing the woods, the snow and ice, the reflection of the mountain in the lake, he was in fact documenting his own personal experience of the place. He was seeing his own reflection in the landscape around him. The work in Narcissus examines the way in which we search for our image or identity in nature. It is about the way man and nature are intrinsically connected and how nature – the landscape – can become mediated through photography to settle as an echo of ourselves.
All works are available to purchase. Scroll down or click here to view artworks.
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Images from Stela series © Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos
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“As I spent time working on Otrøya, I came to decipher my own perception of the landscape. When I first arrived, I wanted to explore the whole island and climb every mountain. I ended up realising that everything I needed was within a few hundred meters. [..] Suddenly, my intimacy with the landscape increased. I came to know it as a friend’s face and this familiarity drew me ever closer.”
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Rope Like Hair, Skarsheia, 2010 © Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos
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“I studied geography and travelled a great deal, mainly on assignment for National Geographic, and so I saw a lot of the world. But I realize now that when, in the autumn of 2009, I unpacked my Land Rover into the Norwegian cabin I understood very little about landscape photography. I needed time to learn and reflect. Narcissus follow the process by which I came to grow photographically and engage with this remote island.”
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“I became aware of an ‘immanent significance’ at least for me, in the character of the landscape. I saw trolls in the grass, faces in the trees, and serpents in the sea.”
Sleeping Trolls, 2010 © Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos
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“Whilst working on this book, I saw that these photographs are simply a monochrome, visual reaction to the landscape of Otrøya. Photography as a means of expression or communication is limited. It can only reveal one dimension of sensation: vision. The rest we have to imagine and the ambiguity of black-and-white photographs requires we imagine even more. This imagining is, for me, part of the pleasure of looking at photographs."
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ARTWORKS IN THE EXHIBITION
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Stuart FranklinGrasses I, 2010signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned16 x 20 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinWillow and Wire, 2011signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned16 x 20 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinRain on Water with Pines, 2010signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned16 x 20 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinStela I, 2010signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned20 x 16 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinTorso II, 2010signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned16 x 20 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinStela III, 2010signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned20 x 16 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinIce Study I, 2013signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned16 x 20 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinIce Study II, 2013signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned16 x 20 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinBranches over Hestøyra, 2011signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned16 x 20 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinTree/man, 2011signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned20 x 16 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinTyre Track I, 2013signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned16 x 20 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinTyre Track II, 2013signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned16 x 20 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinSnow Hill, 2010signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned16 x 20 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinRope Like Hair, Skarsheia, 2010signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned20 x 16 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinSleeping Trolls, 2010signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned16 x 20 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinStela in Moonlight I, 2010signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned20 x 16 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinStela in Moonlight II, 2010signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned20 x 16 inchesEdition of 10
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Stuart FranklinMask I, 2011signed and numbered versosilver gelatin print, selenium toned20 x 16 inchesEdition of 10
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All images © Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos
Please contact us for further information and edition availability.
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Stuart Franklin was born in London in 1956. He studied at Oxford Polytechnic and the Sir John Cass School of Art under Leonard McComb before completing a BA in photography at West Surrey College of Art and Design. His photographic career began when he started to work for Now Magazine, The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph Magazine in London and later with Agence Presse Sygma in Paris. During his time at Sygma (1980–85) he absorbed the skills of news photography—covering stories in Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland and Sudan—and also followed Henri Cartier-Bresson’s approach to photography; as he puts it, “curious, gentle, surreal with beautiful compositions – his work influenced just about everything I attempted.”
It was in 1989 that Franklin took his acclaimed photographs in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where a demonstration for freedom ended in a massacre. After that, he began to move away from news into magazine feature photography. Between 1990 and 2008 he photographed about twenty stories for National Geographic Magazine. During this time, Stuart decided to pursue a better theoretical understanding of some of the issues he confronted, by embarking on a period of academic study in 1995. He graduated with a first class degree in Geography from Oxford University and went on to complete his doctoral thesis there in 2001. Franklin was awarded a professorship in documentary photography in 2016. Franklin’s deep ecological concern is reflected in his work for Greenpeace in Antarctica (1989), his stories for National Geographic—covering subjects including Inca conqueror Francisco Pizarro and the hydro-struggle in Quebec—his ominous photographic document of Europe’s changing landscape, which culminated in the book, Footprint: Our Landscape in Flux (2008).
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Afterword published in Stuart Franklin, Narcissus, Hatje Cantz 2013
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Installation views of Stuart Franklin
The Fine Art Society, Edinburgh, April 2013
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MAGNUM QUARANTINE CONVERSATIONS: STUART FRANKLIN & MARK POWER
March 31st 2020
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This exhibition is online only, running 6 March - 17 April. Visit our homepage to see what's on at The Fine Art Society.
Enquire about works by Stuart Franklin below.
